grenell, ric
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trump admin 2 andrew tate
see iran nuke deal
merri ok
real estate deals w kushner SERBIA FLYNN BLAGO JR
maybe not plum
5/20 replaced by ratcliffe
gay but did not mention in rnc speech?
2 26 NAME CAME UP EPSTEIN?
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However, the primary catalyst for her firing was the immediate unraveling of her professional biography. Both Zacharia and the president had repeatedly marketed her to the public as a credentialed "attorney." Yet, an independent record search quickly revealed an embarrassing flub: there is no record of Zacharia ever holding a license to practice law in California or any other American jurisdiction. Documentation confirmed that while she graduated from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011, she failed the California bar exam. Legal experts quickly warned that by presenting herself as "general counsel" for Ric Grenell’s conservative advocacy group, Fix California, Zacharia may have actively violated the law regarding the unauthorized practice of law.
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Fix California’ Launches Statewide Legal Inspection of Current County Voter Rolls
Grenell’s legal team is identifying high concentrations of inaccurate or poorly maintained voter rolls
By Katy Grimes, July 14, 2021
California’s November 3, 2020 election was marred by significant voting and registration irregularities, the Globe reported in June, following an alarming report by the Election Integrity Project California.
Mass irregularities in California’s registration and voting numbers continue to erode voter confidence, which is why Ric Grenell and his team at Fix California have launched a statewide legal survey analyzing the current status of voter rolls throughout the state, and they are prepared to start suing counties.
Some California counties have an astoundingly high number of ineligible registrants:
Sacramento County: 36,737, Orange County: 92,014, San Diego County: 247,671, Los Angeles County: 1,138,910, even tiny Alpine County with 924 eligible citizens has 85 ineligible registrants.
It is important to note that California’s National Voter Registration Act Manual says: “[c]ounties must maintain all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” (California NVRA Manual, Chapter 4, Section I n.2)
The California Globe has talked with Richard “Ric” Grenell several times – and again this week – about his long term “Fix California” plan, which places a specific focus on legal, free and fair elections.
Grenell, the former Ambassador to Germany and President Donald Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, says in California, state and county election officials have abandoned their responsibility to protect elections and ensure that the voices of Californians are heard. He says Fix California is committed to holding these officials accountable while establishing a better process that protects every legal vote.
Richard Grenell speaking at Students for Trump and Turning Point Action in Phoenix, 6/23/2020. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
Fix California has already contacted 26 of the largest counties in California, and put them on notice that they plan to inspect records related to county voter list maintenance obligations, through California Public Records Act requests.
Grenell says his team at Fix California is prepared to sue 26 counties – “Clean up the voter rolls or we’ll take you to court,” Grenell said.
Grenell reports they have been strategically and systematically working to address all three pillars of Fix California: (1) Election Integrity, (2) Voter Registration, (3) Education Reform.
As Grenell explained, “this is not a sexy, quick fix like one hyped-up statewide race. This is a four-year campaign to fix California and to do the long-term reforms that we know we need.”
With the 26 county information requests including Los Angeles County, San Diego, Riverside, Kern, Fresno, Ventura, Placer, Orange, and Sacramento, Fix California is looking for inactive registrations, voter registrations cancelled, registrants not satisfying the citizenship requirements for registration, deceased registrants, individuals who moved out of state, the number of voter applicants providing applications to vote with either a blank affirmation of U.S. Citizenship or an affirmation of non-citizenship for 2016 to date, out-of-state change of address requests.
These public records requests will allow Fix California to cross check voter data with the California Secretary of State, Department of Motor Vehicles, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address database, California Attorney General, any California Superior Court, the County Health Systems, county and city district attorneys’ offices, and county and city election departments.
This is cross checking which should have been going on all along by counties. And that’s Grenell’s concern: “through our work on the data front, we are identifying key areas where there appears to be high concentrations of inaccurate or poorly maintained voter rolls.”
Grenell is right. As the Globe recently reported, California has 1.8 million more registered voters than it should – that we know of.
The Election Integrity Project identified critical problems with the voter rolls:
- 124,000 more votes counted in California’s November 3, 2020 election than voters recorded as voting in that election. Most of the discrepancy driven by 116,000 vote-by-mail ballots with no apparent voter identified in VoteCal’s voting histories? Click here for a list by county.
- More than 7,700 voters have TWO November 3, 2020 votes credited to their voting histories. These are two votes credited to each of 7,700 unique (non-duplicated) registration ID numbers in the state database. This indicates mass double voting, a significant programming error in the state’s registration system, or both.
- California has 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible citizens. Why did this overage rise 72% in the 2020 election cycle? Click here for a list by county.
- California’s on-line and DMV registration systems changed 33,000 foreign-born voters’ birthplaces of record to “California” or “United States,” potentially masking non-citizens unlawfully registered to vote. Similarly, 76,000 birthplaces changed from another U.S. state to California? Click here for a chart of birthplace changes.
Grenell’s Fix California is also committed to registering and engaging a new, diverse coalition of pro-freedom Californians around issues and causes that will improve the lives of every resident. They are concerned because many hardworking Californians are not registering to vote.
As for fixing what ails California, Grenell says he watched closely as Stacey Abrams came up with a 4-year plan to “fix” Georgia. “We thought at the time, ‘oh c’mon man,’” Grenell said. “But, we must understand her vision of 4-years… and now we have two Democratic Senators from Georgia – a (formerly) red state,” he said. “I want to do to California what she did to Georgia.”
“We’re not going to cheat like Abrams, but you’ve got to be in awe of what she accomplished.”
“We will be focused on needs, county by county,” Grenell said. “Anyone involved in politics not talking about voter integrity won’t get support. There’s a huge appetite to fix the problems.”
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Grenell, Zeldin tour California fire damage: Report | American Agenda
fixcalifornia.com
Grenell also was the foreign policy and national security spokesman for the GOP Presidential nominee during the 2012 presidential campaign. On April 26, 2018, Grenell was confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 56 to 42 and presented his credentials to the President of Germany on May 8, 2018.
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California Globe
'Fix California' Launches Statewide Legal Inspection of Current County ...
1 day agoMass irregularities in California's registration and voting numbers continue to erode voter confidence, which is why Ric Grenell and his team at Fix California have launched a statewide legal survey analyzing the current status of voter rolls throughout the state, and they are prepared to start suing counties.
California Globe
Ric Grenell to 'Fix California' With Three-Point Plan in Democrat ...
Richard Grenell speaking at 'An Address to Young Americans,' hosted by Students for Trump and Turning Point Action at Dream City Church in Phoenix, June 23, 2020. (Photo by Gage Skidmore) Richard Grenell, former Acting Director of National Intelligence and U.S. Ambassador to Germany, announced he is
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MFG FYLNN FARA TRUMP JR GOLF CORRUPT
https://www.dw.com/en/us-president-donald-trumps-trio-for-the-balkans/a-71649332
dw
no pix lnx
US President Donald Trump's trio for the Balkans
Alexander Rhotert
02/18/2025February 18, 2025
President Trump's new team for the Balkans includes some familiar faces with close ties to Serbia: son-in-law Jared Kushner, former special envoy Richard Grenell and ex-governor Rod Blagojevich.
https://p.dw.com/p/4qdGO
Two men (Richard Grenell and Donald Trump) in blue suits stand in front of a US flag. Between them and the flag is a large blue banner with the words 'Protect our food from China' and 'Protecting America Initiative,' which are only partially visible
Richard Grenell (left) and Donald Trump at an event in Philadelphia in September 2024Image: AP Photo/Alex Brandon/picture alliance
The first weeks of Donald J. Trump's second presidency have shown that The New York Times hit the nail on the head with its Inauguration Day headline: "The Deal Maker in Chief Is Back."
Trump's foreign policy also seems to show that his beloved "deals" will remain a dominant theme of his second administration.
There have already been three indications of this: The US is willing to continue sending military aid to Ukraine in return for access to its reserves of raw materials such as rare earths and lithium, the "takeover" of the Gaza Strip to create a "Riviera of the Middle East," and — a Trump classic — a "Trump Tower" in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
The first attempt to get this last project off the ground stalled in 2012. The fact that construction is now about to begin 13 years later is largely due to Trump's close adviser, Richard "Ric" Grenell.
Grenell was special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations during the first Trump administration, and Trump recently named him presidential envoy for special missions.
Trump Tower No. 5
Grenell has close — almost friendly — relations with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Foreign Minister Marko Djuric, a former Serbian ambassador to the US.
Vucic even presented Grenell with the Order of the Serbian Flag in 2023 in recognition of his "balanced approach" to Europe's youngest state, the Republic of Kosovo, which Serbia still claims as part of its territory 26 years after the end of the Kosovo War.
The Trump Tower Belgrade deal — which, according to The New York Times, comes with a price tag of half a billion dollars — was concluded by the Serbian government, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Arab investors in March 2024.
A man in a blue suit (Richard Grenell) holds a box containing an order. Beside him is a taller man (Aleksandar Vucic). The two men are standing in front of a row of flagsA man in a blue suit (Richard Grenell) holds a box containing an order. Beside him is a taller man (Aleksandar Vucic). The two men are standing in front of a row of flags
Grenell (left) received the Order of the Serbian Flag from Serbian President Vucic (right) in Belgrade on October 25, 2023Image: Darko Vojinovic/dpa/picture alliance
The plan is to turn the former headquarters of the Armed Forces of Serbia (then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) into a hotel complex with luxury apartments, including a memorial to the victims of the NATO bombardment of Belgrade in 1999, during which the building was damaged.
After New York, Chicago, Manila and Istanbul, this would be the fifth Trump Tower worldwide.
'The perfect man for Belgrade'
On February 7, Politico reported that Trump was considering making Rod "Blago" Blagojevich US ambassador to Serbia. The former Democratic governor of Illinois is a colorful political figure — even by Trump's standards.
Blagojevich, the son of Serbian immigrants, was removed from office in 2009 and sentenced three years later to 14 years in prison for corruption.
When Trump commuted his sentence during his first term in office, Blagojevich was released from prison in 2020.
A man (Rod Blagojevich) wearing a black coat and a gray roll-neck sweater looks past the cameraA man (Rod Blagojevich) wearing a black coat and a gray roll-neck sweater looks past the camera
Rod 'Blago' Blagojevich is being touted as the next US ambassador to SerbiaImage: Vincent Alban/REUTERS
This makes the Democrat an ideal ally for the Republican president, says Daniel Serwer, Balkans expert at Johns Hopkins University and US Balkans negotiator under former US President Bill Clinton. "Blago is the perfect man for Belgrade: a profoundly corrupt politician who will be willing to do anything Trump wants to be rehabilitated," Serwer told DW.
Trump popular with Serbs — at home and abroad
After his removal from office, Blagojevich appeared on Donald Trump's show "The Celebrity Apprentice" in 2010.
When Trump was nominated presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Blagojevich and Grenell made several electoral appearances together, especially in parts of the USA with large Serbian communities, where Trump had high approval ratings — as he did among nationalist Serbian politicians in Serbia and in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, which also have Serbian communities.
A US coastguard boat with a gun on the front sails past a residence with peach-colored walls surrounded by palm trees. There is a large American flag in the grounds of the residenceA US coastguard boat with a gun on the front sails past a residence with peach-colored walls surrounded by palm trees. There is a large American flag in the grounds of the residence
According to a businessman who attended an event at Mar-a-Lago (pictured here), Trump called Blagojevich a 'great friend' and 'close associate'Image: Jen Golbeck/picture alliance/Sipa USA
In early 2024, five US businessmen with Serbian roots attended a reception at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. One of them was Ranko Ristic, founder of the company Zastava Arms USA, which has the exclusive right to import to the US firearms produced by the Serbian company Zastava Oruzje.
According to Ristic, Trump referred to Blagojevich during the event as a "great friend" and "close associate." Ristic said that he himself had told Trump that during the 1991–95 Bosnian War, Bosnian Serbs had had to defend themselves against 3,000 mujahedeen.
Criticism of Kosovo's prime minister
Blagojevich met President Vucic in Belgrade in early February. During his visit, he was highly critical in the media of Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti, saying that Serbs in Kosovo were the target of "ethnic cleansing" that was taking place there.
In 1999, the USA and other NATO countries bombarded Serbia to force it to withdraw its troops from Kosovo, which was then part of Serbia, to prevent the expulsion of the majority ethnic Albanian population from the province.
25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
05:06
Blagojevich apologized to Vucic for the USA's involvement in this intervention in the Kosovo War. "My country did a terrible thing to your country in the 1990s," Trump's potential ambassador to Serbia told Vucic, adding: "It's no different from what Russia is doing in Ukraine (...) I think President Trump will work on improving our countries' relations."
Trump's confidant Grenell has also criticized Kosovo's Prime Minister Kurti on multiple occasions. In addition, he met with an archenemy of Kurti, former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, in Washington the day before Trump's inauguration.
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According to a post by KosovoOnline on X, Haradinaj said that Grenell had confirmed to him that it would "not be good for Kosovo if Kurti remains in power."
Kurti has been in Grenell's bad books since 2020 when he rejected an ethnically motivated exchange of territory between Kosovo and Serbia proposed by Grenell. Kurti's Vetevendosje party won Kosovo's parliamentary election on February 9.
More radical rhetoric on Kosovo
These developments, which are extremely positive for Vucic, stand in stark contrast to the mass protests that have been rocking Serbia since early November.
In recent weeks, the Serbian president's rhetoric regarding Kosovo has taken a more radical turn, undoubtedly to divert attention from his obvious domestic problems.
In an interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric referred to Kosovo as "our southern province," where Serbs were exposed to "permanent discrimination and harassment."
A man (Albin Kurti) dressed in a dark green winter coat smiles broadly as he speaks into a microphoneA man (Albin Kurti) dressed in a dark green winter coat smiles broadly as he speaks into a microphone
The party of Albin Kurti (pictured here) won the parliamentary election in Kosovo on February 9Image: Florion Goga/REUTERS
Milan Mojsilovic, chief of General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, told the Serbian daily newspaper Vecernje novosti that Serbia's armed forces were at the ready to "protect Serbs and other non-Albanians on the territory of our southern province." There were, he said, "indicators for potential destabilization" in Kosovo.
Vucic, who has in the past referred to Kurti as "terrorist scum," described him recently on Serbia's Happy TV as a "villain" who "hates Serbs."
What does this mean for Bosnia?
Kurt Bassuener, director of the Berlin think tank Democratization Policy Council, told DW that Greater Serbian aspirations pose a threat not only to the territorial integrity of Kosovo but also to that of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The EU could, he said, respond to Belgrade's aggression toward its neighbors by "significantly beefing up" the EUFOR Althea mission, which protects peace in Bosnia, with combat troops.
Were this to happen, a US-Balkan team comprising Grenell, Kushner and Blagojevich — including a direct line to the White House — would be a gift for Belgrade. It would also mean that an improvement in Serbia-Kosovo relations — already unlikely as it is — would slip further away.
A large crowd fills a square in Nis, Serbia. Several people are holding up Serbian flags A large crowd fills a square in Nis, Serbia. Several people are holding up Serbian flags
Protests have been taking place across Serbia at regular intervals since last NovemberImage: Jelena Djukic Pejic/DW
The EU responded in 2023 to the last Kosovo Serb attacks on NATO and Kosovo security forces and a Serb military buildup on the Serbia-Kosovo border with sanctions — paradoxically, against Kosovo.
It was only the personal intervention of the then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who spoke to President Vucic, and the enormous pressure exerted by NATO that were able to get Serbian tanks to turn back.
Today, both Western Balkans experts Serwer and Bassuener doubt that the US would stop Vucic's army should the worst come to the worst. Serwer also warns that even the discussion of the breakup of Kosovo or Ukraine would animate Serbian secessionists in Bosnia to take corresponding action.
"It will be up to Bosnians to react to that," Serwer told DW. "The Javelins are Kosovo's best defense at this point." Without the delivery of the highly effective US Javelin anti-tank weapon system, Ukraine's successful resistance to Russia's all-out invasion in 2022 would have been inconceivable.
In view of the current security policy situation, an escalation of potential conflicts in the Western Balkans is certainly becoming increasingly likely.
This article was originally published in German.
Head shot of a man (Alexander Rhotert) with glasses in front of a pale wallHead shot of a man (Alexander Rhotert) with glasses in front of a pale wall
Alexander Rhotert Political scientist, author and expert on the Western Balkans
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On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston, Jr. decided he’d had enough of one former Trump official’s libel suit against an ex-aide and stomped his suit into the ground for good.
It was former Kennedy Center chief Richard Grenell second go-around in trying to sue ex-Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye over her claim that Grenell, while a former Acting Director of National Intelligence and a former United States Ambassador, had tried to arrange for former vice president Pence “to attend a white supremacist event while he was on an overseas trip.”
Troye further claimed Grenell “hung out with Nazis during his time serving as the Ambassador to Germany.”
Grenell claimed personal and economic damages in his libel suit, but judge Alston pointed out that Troye’s accusation of Nazi connections did nothing to hinder his career after President Donald Trump entered office.
“Plaintiff acknowledges that, since these remarks were posted, he has: (received private equity opportunities overseas, been named the Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, been named the Interim Director of the Kennedy Center, and joined the Board of Directors at [Fox News’] Live Nation,” Alston pointed out.
Acknowledging this, the judge dismissed the suit “with prejudice,” which effectively cans any further attempt by Grenell to sue Troye over the same accusations.
Troye, for her part, has never retracted her claim of Grenell’s Nazi connections.
Left Hook host, Wjahat Ali called Grenell’s suit “frivolous ... lawfare” on Wednesday and said Grenell had obviously been inspired by his boss Donald Trump to intimidate all opposition with expensive court cases.
“Instead of bending the knee like corporate law firms and media outlets, Troye decided to fight her case — and she won!” said Ali.
“It's just really a way to make an example of an individual and say, if any of you other people speak out, this is coming your way,” Troye added on Ali’s show.
Troye said she caught similar intimidation from the administration when she criticized the appointment and subsequent confirmation of FBI director Kash Patel, who Troye openly complained was unfit for the job.
“Every time I went out and criticized Kash Patel and said he was unfit to become the FBI director, I got a letter, and … MS NOW got a letter threatening to sue them and me over the fact that I was merely saying what other people who have directly worked with Kash Patel were saying as well,” said Troye. “Yeah. It didn't stop me. I showed up at his confirmation hearing because I was, like, ‘all right, you're going to threaten me. I'm going to show up with a former judge and former FBI director.’ And we sat through that hearing together so that I could stare. Republican senators in the face and in the eyes and say, ‘you know exactly what this individual is.’
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Grenell calls ice rink vandal a 'terrorist' as federal authorities hunt suspect in toxic attack
11 hours agoTrump-Kennedy Center vandalism suspect accused of pouring toxic substance on outdoor ice rink as federal authorities investigate what officials described as a "targeted attack."
](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/grenell-calls-ice-rink-vandal-a-terrorist-as-federal-authorities-hunt-suspect-in-toxic-attack/ar-AA1WPj94)
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How Kennedy Center Goon Got Dumped With Job
9 days agoKennedy Center President Richard Grenell effectively shut himself out of the second Trump White House by screaming at the president's right-hand woman, insiders have revealed. Grenell has long sought a higher perch in Trump's orbit—reportedly floating himself as the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 2024 and secretary of state a year later—but has been blocked by Susie Wiles,
](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-kennedy-center-goon-got-dumped-with-job/ar-AA1WfKHO)
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Ric Grenell Screamed at Trump's Gatekeeper. Whoopsie...
10 days agoTim Miller joined Nicolle Wallace to talk about the DOJ's failed attempt to indict six Democrats—and the stunning cowardice of Mike Johnson, who suggested his own colleagues may have committed crimes.](https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ric-grenell-screamed-at-trumps-gatekeeper)
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Rubio 'elbowed' Richard Grenell out of Venezuela file before Maduro capture: 'He was a nobody in Latin America': report
9 days agoGrenell initially pursued a track with Venezuela that emphasized negotiations, prisoner releases and oil-sector arrangements over regime change](https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/international-relations/rubio-elbowed-richard-grenell-out-of-venezuela-file-before-maduro-capture-he-was-a-nobody-in-latin-america-report/ar-AA1Wj832)
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Gay Trump toadie Ric Grenell may soon be on his way out of the White House
9 days agoOne reason may be because, "Susie f*cking hates his guts," one Trump family source said.
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Grenell says he'll be motivated to challenge Harris if she runs for California governor
254 days agoRichard Grenell, President Donald Trump's envoy for special missions, signaled he would consider jumping into California's gubernatorial race if former Vice President Kamala Harris decided to run. California's race is more than a year away, but ...
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Grenell Lashes Out At Democrat Senator's 'Careless' Probe Of Kennedy Center Finances
93 days agoKennedy Center President Richard Grenell threw down the gauntlet over what he called Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's "careless" and "inaccurate" probe into the performing arts institution. Whitehouse, an ex officio member of ...](https://ijr.com/grenell-lashes-out-at-democrat-senators-careless-probe-of-kennedy-center-finances/)
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Grenell rips Harris over Buttigieg VP snub for sexual orientation, calls her a 'hypocrite'
152 days agoKennedy Center President Richard Grenell slams Kamala Harris over her explanation for passing on Pete Buttigieg as a running mate in 2024, accusing her of hypocrisy and political convenience. "Typical Lefty. Talk loudly. Take our money. Demand our vote.
](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/3820997/grenell-rips-harris-over-buttigieg-vp-snub-for-sexual-orientation-calls-her-a-hypocrite/)
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Ric Grenell's Defense of the Trump Kennedy Center Should Be Embarrassing. He Feels No Shame.
66 days agoRic Grenell wants you to believe the renaming of the Kennedy Center is about competence. About spreadsheets and fundraising totals and managerial seriousness. About rescuing a once-neglected institution through discipline and donor enthusiasm. This, he ...
](https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/ric-grenells-defense-of-the-trump-kennedy-center-should-be-embarrassing-he-feels-no-shame/)
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Tensions between Rubio, Grenell flare over Venezuela deals
225 days agoPresident Trump's envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, is causing tensions within the State Department as critics say his "freelancing" is damaging U.S. diplomatic negotiations and threatening national security. The most recent controversy ...](https://www.aol.com/tensions-between-rubio-grenell-flare-160000780.html)
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Gay MAGA administration official rages at Gavin Newsom's wife for buying cancer recovery products
250 days agoLast week, Ric Grenell, an administration staffer and president of the now-MAGA Kennedy Center, waded into California state politics with an attack on Jennifer Siebel Newsom, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) wife. It could have something to do with ...](https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/06/gay-maga-administration-official-rages-at-gavin-newsoms-wife-for-buying-cancer-recovery-products/)
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EXCLUSIVE: Richard Grenell Reveals Trump's Plan To Rescue The 'Dying Arts'
148 days agoWASHINGTON — Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell suggested the iconic D.C. cultural venue's recent success, spurred by the "common sense" efforts of President Donald Trump, represents hope for an otherwise grim landscape for the arts.](https://ijr.com/richard-grenell-reveals-trumps-plan-to-rescue-the-dying-arts/)
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Grenell praises Trump's 'common sense' foreign policy, slams Biden for avoiding Putin
129 days agoEXCLUSIVE: Kennedy Center President and Ambassador Richard Grenell slammed former President Joe Biden for avoiding Russian President Vladimir Putin as war raged between Russia and Ukraine, while praising President Donald Trump's "common sense" foreign ...
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Kennedy Center president criticizes Hamilton production staff over alleged boycott
243 days agoWASHINGTON — In a statement released Monday, Ambassador Richard Grenell, president of the Kennedy Center, took direct aim at 'Hamilton' producer Jeffrey Seller and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, accusing the Broadway power duo of politicizing the arts and ...](https://www.wusa9.com/article/entertainment/kennedy-center-president-criticizes-hamilton-over-alleged-boycott/65-355fc4ad-5ca9-4fbe-97d6-922c9b84f280)
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Richard Grenell
286 days agoNew details of deliberations show how aides with overlapping agendas drove the United States toward a militarized confrontation with Venezuela. By Edward Wong, Tyler Pager, Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes and Maria Abi-Habib The musician Chuck Redd ...
](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/richard-grenell?page=9)
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'Can't stand on that stage': More artists are canceling Kennedy Center shows due to Trump
//
President Donald Trump appointed his acolytes to oversee the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and immediately began looting, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in an interview with The Guardian.
“You float stuff and you float stuff and you float stuff until people get inured to what a stupid or outrageous thing it is that has been floated and then you pull the trigger," Whitehouse said.
As part of Trump's "renovations" of the Kennedy Center was ordering new letters to put his name on the building above Kennedy's name. Much like the Department of Defense, the name of the cultural center can only officially be changed by Congress, which established it in law. Still, the administration ordered the sign. Past appointees to the board were ousted. The new Trump board did a quick vote to change the name and within hours workers began installing Trump's name.
After Trump's moves in November, Whitehouse and other lawmakers began a formal investigation into accusations that the board were mismanaging the financials of the center.
Documents Whitehouse found it is being operated as a “slush fund and private club for Trump’s friends and political allies."
“We began to get information about mischief taking place at the Kennedy Center and we got strong enough signals that we mounted an effort to dig into it and see what seemed actually to be going on," said Whitehouse.
“It was out of that effort that the report and letter came, which basically suggested that, when the brigands took the ship, their first instinct was to loot it for their own benefit and hire their friends and put people up in fancy rooms at the Watergate [Hotel] and let favored organizations get free access and it was all part of a MAGA party atmosphere."
So far, under their leadership, the Kennedy Center has suffered from millions of dollars in losses. So, Whitehouse demanded the records from the new board chairman, longtime Trump pal, Ric Grenell.
Grenell responded alleging Whitehouse was making “partisan attacks and false accusations."
Any "financial chaos" has come not from his leadership but the previous president was “quite literally making the building fall apart."
One contract Grenell entered into was with FIFA to have exclusive use of the entire Kennedy Center from Nov. 24 to Dec. 12 for The World Cup events.
"Estimates provided by Whitehouse show this will cost the Center $5,038,444 in losses from direct rental fees, programming rescheduling, labor, food and beverage and other services. Multiple events were cancelled or rescheduled to accommodate FIFA," The Guardian report said.
Grenell claimed FIFA was paying for the expenses in lieu of a rental fee.
Whitehouse questioned the claim, saying nothing in the documents confirms Grenell's promises.
FIFA has been “brown-nosing Trump relentlessly and giving him comical peace trophies to butter him up and at the same time getting free access to the Kennedy Center," Whitehouse said about his concerns.
The PR person for the Kennedy Center claimed FIFA was giving more than the $5 million-plus in rental fees.
But the contract shows rental discounts have already been given to conservative groups.
The report cited a NewsNation deal, where the network scored a $19,820 discount for it's town hall. The American Conservative Union Foundation got a $21,982.60 discount as they hosted a CPAC event titled The Christian Persecution Summit. The Guardian reported that the contract file specifically cites “waived costs from OOP” (the Office of the President).
There's another contract paying $15,000 a month to Grenell’s former colleague. There are no details on the contract. Grenell swears his contract was "covered" by a donation.
In May, the Kennedy Center began paying $10,833.33 to Kari Lake's husband, Jeff Halperin to do "social media capture/editing" services.
There have also been hefty expenses on luxury entertainment and hospitality for "staff and associates." That's when Grenell billed the Kennedy Center for $27,185 for rooms at the luxury Watergate Hotel. Then there are dinners and lunches, champagne service and more for staff who also worked for Grenell's political organizations.
“If they weren’t paying the proper ordinary Kennedy Center rates, they’re being given a benefit and those benefits seem only to be going towards groups that are affiliated with Trump and MAGA. It’s basically a direct way to use this public facility to put money into the pockets of groups that are allied," said Whitehouse.
All of this is happening while the Kennedy Center is over budget amid falling ticket sales and major acts canceling shows. Grenell blamed the previous administration.
Whitehouse fears it's just the tip of the ice berg.
"I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of narrative enhancement to the MAGA movement. They will lie their way through very obvious facts to protect a narrative," he said.
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RWW
06/02/2025
by
Last month, Right Wing Watch reported that Christian nationalist activist Floyd Brown had been appointed to serve as a vice president at the Kennedy Center, which President Donald Trump took over shortly after returning to the White House earlier this year.
Last week, CNN's Andrew Kaczynski reported on Brown's position and his history of bigoted and controversial statements. Kaczynski's reporting, in turn, quickly led to Brown's dismissal from his position.
On Friday, Brown appeared on "The Lance Wallnau Show" to discuss his firing, which he blamed on Satan.
Brown began by complaining that his controversial statements had all been made before he was appointed to serve as the Kennedy Center and therefore his dismissal was unjustified and unfair.
"First of all, I made those comments about three years ago, long before President Trump was chairman of the Kennedy Center and long before I accepted the position at the Kennedy Center," Brown said. "So, it really didn't have to do with my Kennedy Center job; you know, what I said in the past at a Christian conference."
"I wasn't going to disavow any of my Christian beliefs around traditional marriage," he added. "This video triggered a lot of the people that work in the higher up levels of the Kennedy Center and so it led to me being dismissed because of my beliefs and I think that's wrong."
"I was doing the job and I was doing it well," Brown insisted. "Every day that I went to work there, I was praying for Ambassador [Richard] Grenell. I was praying for the staff of the Kennedy Center. I was praying circle prayers around the building. I was praying hedge of protection prayers.
"I knew from day one, because of the discernment given to me by the Holy Spirit as a believer, that I was contending in a spiritual battle and that I was near the top of the mountain, I was near the gates, and I was contending with those spiritual powers at that gate," Brown declared, using language reflective of the Seven Mountains Dominionism theology that he promotes.
"I think the closer that I got to the gate and the more Christians I brought in the door, the more Satan was pushing back against what I was doing," Brown said. "We were making real progress, not only in the natural but in the spiritual, and so Satan counterattacked and I really think that's the main reason that I was fired."
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3 25 intercept
Trump Helps Alleged Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate Back Into U.S.
the Republican Party is obsessed with sex trafficking, grooming, and pedophilia.
For years, the GOP has built its brand on a bizarre, often conspiratorial fixation with sex trafficking, invoking this trafficking panic to justify border militarization and its assault on LGBTQ+ adults and children.
And yet, when an actual accused rapist and alleged human trafficker comes along, Republicans rush to his defense — and lobby to bring him back to the United States.
When an actual accused rapist and alleged human trafficker comes along, Republicans rush to his defense.
President Donald Trump’s administration has successfully lobbied to bring Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan back to the U.S. from Romania, where Tate faces charges of human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and money laundering.
American officials first brought up Tate’s case in a call with the Romanian government last week. At an international conference, Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell pressed Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the self-described misogynist influencer, the Financial Times reported.
Tate, a former professional kickboxer and avid Trump supporter, has used his massive social media following to spread his reactionary politics and violent hatred of women, influencing a generation of boys and young men by preying on their insecurities and promising quick riches through affiliate marketing schemes.
Prosecutors in Romania allege that Tate and his brother set up a criminal enterprise and used it to sexually exploit multiple people.
Despite these serious allegations, Republican figures and influencers have repeatedly defended Tate.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who has been investigated for sex trafficking himself, previously offered support to Tate, saying that the charges always seemed “suspect.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson traveled to Romania for a softball interview with Tate, allowing the influencer to portray himself as a family man who is merely a victim of “the matrix” and the mainstream media.
Allegations of sexual harassment and assault are no longer a line that can’t be crossed in conservative politics. Trump himself has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and harassment, found liable by a jury of sexual abuse, and notoriously had a close friendship with the serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Despite a sex trafficking probe that closed without charges, Gaetz took the stage for a speech at the Republican National Convention.
And when former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert pleaded guilty to trying to pay off men he had sexually abused as a high school wrestling coach, prominent Republicans, including three former congressmen, supported him enough to write letters in defense of his character to a federal judge. (To be clear, the Democratic Party is also guilty of downplaying or defending abusers within its own ranks; this is not a partisan problem.)
But the GOP’s embrace of Tate, and other sex criminals on the right, reveals the hollowness of the Republican Party’s anti-trafficking campaign. Trafficking is not a real issue for Republican lawmakers — it’s a rhetorical weapon used to advance draconian crackdowns, delegitimize political opponents, and launch broader attacks on progressive and feminist movements.
If they were serious about fighting trafficking, then they would focus instead on labor protections and expanding social safety net services for the most vulnerable populations.
They will lobby for Andrew Tate before they ever lift a finger for an actual victim.
Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sought to distance himself from the Tate brothers, saying that Florida is not a place where they’re welcome.
“I don’t know how it came to this,” DeSantis said. “We were not involved, we were not notified. I found out through the media.”
As Republican politicians continue their fixation on the supposed trafficking epidemic, demanding border crackdowns and pretending to be champions for exploited children, remember where their loyalties lie. They will lobby for Andrew Tate before they ever lift a finger for an actual victim.
For the Trump administration, trafficking is not a crisis to solve. It’s a crisis to exploit.
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Aja Romano @ Vox: Why the Trump administration is publicly supporting an alleged human trafficker
This latest high-profile turn in Tate’s ongoing legal saga has again brought the horrifying allegations against him to the forefront — this time with apparent approval from the US government.
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vox
no lnx
Why the Trump administration is publicly supporting an alleged human trafficker
In short? His massive influence.
by Aja Romano
:{Feb 25, 2025,
TOPSHOT-ROMANIA-BRITAIN-US-COURT-CRIME
Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate (back right) speak to journalists after having been released from detention in Bucharest, Romania on March 12, 2024. Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images
:
Aja Romano writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.
Andrew Tate made his name as a misogynist podcast star, but has more recently been known as an alleged rapist and human trafficker as he awaits criminal trial in Romania with his brother Tristan. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration, through special envoy Richard Grenell, had tried to pressure the Romanian government to lift travel restrictions on the brothers.
Andrew Tate, whose online course “Hustler’s University” morphed into a platform with nearly a million users, became a powder keg among far-right media influencers in the early 2020s due to his explicitly sexist worldview and its profound influence over millions of teen boys and young men.
This latest high-profile turn in Tate’s ongoing legal saga has again brought the horrifying allegations against him to the forefront — this time with apparent approval from the US government. It’s also a reminder of the cultural reach of the so-called manosphere that Tate helped popularize.
RelatedHow Andrew Tate sells men on toxic masculinity
Andrew Tate’s enormous influence rests on intense misogyny — and a lot of alleged criminal activity
Tate’s rise started with a successful kickboxing career, was followed by his removal from the British version of Big Brother, and culminated in a hugely popular podcast that anointed him the “King of Toxic Masculinity.” As Rebecca Jennings explained for Vox in 2022, his “inflammatory diatribes against women, whom he compares to property” became viral fodder on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. He was born in the US, raised in the UK, but now lives in Romania — first moving there in part because, he said, “the rape laws are more lenient,” but has stayed since; following his arrest, he has largely not been allowed to leave the country.
Tate helped bring to mainstream concerns about the “manosphere,” the term for the internet’s loose network of right-wing male influencers and their associated communities. Early on, Tate seemed to be such an obviously extremist node of the manosphere that he should be, as Jennings wrote, easy to ignore.
But Tate’s confident, blatant misogyny proved wildly popular: His dictums, which ranged from bragging about never having read a book to flaunting an aggressive emotional and physical dominance over women, seemed to enthrall boys and men who admired him for his flashy lifestyle, vaunted wealth, and commitment to the bit. Tate’s maxims swept across teen culture, generating horror stories from parents and teachers about his seemingly pervasive and pernicious influence. Originally, Tate presented his schtick as pure fiction, a deliberately exaggerated regressive persona. It soon appeared that was far from the case, as allegations against Tate and his brother began mounting.
Romanian officials have pursued Andrew and Tristan Tate since April 2022, when they first raided one of the pair’s mansions after receiving a tip that the Tates had allegedly abducted a woman and were holding her there against her will. The following year, the brothers and two Romanian accomplices were indicted on charges of rape, forming a criminal gang, and human trafficking. Authorities alleged that Andrew and Tristan Tate had trafficked seven women from the US and the UK to Romania by grooming them and subjecting them to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. (The brothers promptly responded with a civil suit against two of their alleged victims.) In early 2024, the two faced new UK allegations of human trafficking, stemming from an investigation launched more than a decade prior.
Then, in August, the Tates faced additional charges of human trafficking after police raided their estate again and detained six people. The brothers have also faced multiple civil lawsuits filed by alleged victims. One such woman recently filed a suit against them in Florida, claiming they defamed her after she agreed to be a witness in the Romanian criminal trial.
Despite the severity and breadth of the charges against them, things have been going fairly well for the Tates. Last month, Andrew Tate was released from house arrest, though he and his brother are still not allowed to leave Romania and are under court supervision. This followed the return of their luxury assets in October, and a November appeals court ruling that major evidence in the first Romanian criminal case, including testimony from alleged victims, was inadmissible. A judge, citing flaws in the indictment, sent the case back to prosecutors for revision. This left the case on shaky ground — and that was before the American government came calling.
Romania’s foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, dismissed his conversation last week with Grenell, which took place briefly during the Munich Security Conference, as “just a repeat of a known stance.” Grenell’s position as “special missions envoy” seems to be an informal one based mainly on his status as a longtime Trump loyalist and his previous role as ambassador to Germany, but he’s made his interest in the Tate brothers public — and explicitly political.
On February 3, before the trip to Munich, Grenell quote-tweeted a reply to Tristan Tate on X and alleged that Romania had used funds from the beleaguered USAID agency to target conservatives, saying the program was “weaponized against people and politicians who weren’t woke.” There appears to be no factual basis for this claim, but it bolsters the Tates’ longtime argument that they are the victims of a political witch hunt.
“I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets,” Grenell told the Financial Times.
Tate’s cultural impact has been felt for years, but is this just the start?
Andrew and Tristan Tate now face three different criminal cases and multiple civil lawsuits in different countries, most for extremely serious allegations of violence and sexual abuse against women. Their most expansive alleged crime, human trafficking, became part of Andrew Tate’s online brand. He actually sold an online course to his followers on how to do it, what he called the “Pimping Hoes Degree.”
Experts say that the techniques Tate taught in this course and elsewhere could be seen as a textbook for how to engage in literal, criminal human trafficking — and the messages Tate espouses across the manosphere are replete with boasting about violence towards women, sexual assault, grooming underage girls, and emotional abuse.
RelatedHow Andrew Tate sells men on toxic masculinity
The “Andrew Tate effect” on young men has been so profound that counteracting it has become a mission across multiple public service sectors, from education to public health. Researchers in Sweden found that boys exposed to manosphere influencers were more likely to dehumanize women, while researchers in Australia found “widespread experience of sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny perpetrated by boys towards women teachers, and the ominous presence of Andrew Tate shaping their behaviour.”
Concerns about Tate encompass real concerns about public safety, and whether boys who have prolonged exposure to him could become more aggressive toward the women around them. At the same time, Tate and others in the manosphere have been credited with helping swing the 2024 US election resoundingly for Trump among young men.
Tate is already a manifestation of extreme misogyny, the worst of what the manosphere has wrought — and his cultural, and now political, elevation is part of a larger, grimmer regression we are perhaps only just at the beginning of.
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1 25 ymail
stock photo of “diverse business people team in office” used by “Beltway Grid Policy Centre.” Image: Freepik.
In October, a new foreign policy think tank calling itself the Beltway Grid Policy Centre quietly entered D.C.'s diplomatic fray. While there was no launch party and is no K Street office we could find, the think tank nevertheless began producing its intellectual product at a startling pace, issuing reports, press releases, and pitching journalists on news coverage—much of it focused on South Asia, and, in particular, the ongoing political crisis in Pakistan.
At first glance, Beltway Grid—which describes itself as "a forward-thinking research institute that dives deep into the modern dynamics of lobbying" whose mission is "to illuminate the hidden tactics shaping global politics"—might be one of many marginal DC-based think tanks trying to shape elite opinion and press coverage. Yet a closer look (and not even that much closer) suggests something a bit more innovative is at play.
Beltway Grid's lack of a physical footprint in Washington — or anywhere else on the earthly plane of existence — stems from more than just a generous work-from-home policy. The organization does not appear to require its employees to exist at all.
That celestial quality begins at the top at Beltway Grid, which does not list an executive director, president, CEO, or any other leader, but does include 12 staff on its "about us" page. None of those employees have any trace of experience—not just professional, but of even living in the world—before arriving at Beltway Grid. Some appear to be plucked from 19th century Elizabethan novels, including Jimmy Prescott, given the rather unique title of "Research Consultant, Lobbying Techniques & Ethics." Then there's Hugh Bradford-Smythe, listed as "Lead Analyst, Political Trends & Impactlicy."
Efforts to reach Bradford-Smythe to get a deeper understanding of his role analyzing "impactlicy" were unsuccessful. Dr. Eleanor Pemberton, the "Director of Policy Research and Impact," was also unavailable for comment and Drop Site could not find any trace of her doctorate or indeed her attendance at any university. (A web search did find an Eleanor Pemberton who was born in 1808 but tragically died that same year.) Similarly unfindable were Ben Templeton, "Senior Fellow, Lobbying and Regulatory Affairs," and his colleague Sebastian Fairchild, serving as "Public Policy and Engagement Coordinator."
An image on the page, “Our Principles,” is a stock photo of a “diverse business people team in office,” according to a reverse Google Image search:
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The unusual nature of Beltway Grid's staffing leaves open several possibilities. The organization may be so hard at work defending the policies of the Pakistan military and criticizing former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the team simply hasn't had time to lead previous lives or respond to requests for comment. They may be early alien settlers, dropped off by drones on the coast of New Jersey, who are fans of Jane Austen and have come to study "the modern dynamics of lobbying." Or, more likely, somebody with a small budget asked ChatGPT to set up a fake think tank. Using AI to make a think tank adds a deeper layer of irony, since AI proponents regularly admonish the public not to conflate the operations of an AI program with “thinking.”
Beltway Grid's work product has left a few other clues as the motivations of its creator. One recent report, "Democracy Under Siege: Economic Fallout and Diplomatic Implications of Protests in Pakistan," argues that the November 2024 protests, which lasted just a few days and were led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party under former Prime Minister Imran Khan, resulted in higher inflation, a currency collapse, a loss of 0.8% of GDP, a cumulative cost of 3 trillion rupees. The numbers are eerily similar to a report distributed internally by the army and obtained by Drop Site News. Independent analysts have suggested the economic malaise may be more closely linked to the overall policies of the military government, but according to the author of the report Beltway Grid's "Chief Strategic Analyst, Political Influence," Alexandra Caldwell, the problems all belong at the foot of Khan. Caldwell could not be reached for further comment, but her report was convincing enough for Pakistani news to turn it into a broadcast. And its report on Imran Khan's bid for Oxford Chancellor—Beltway Grid took a dim view, believe it or not—can be found reported on PR wire services and even republished on Yahoo News.
One giveaway, ironically, that Beltway Grid is not a real DC lobby operation is that it uses the word "lobbying" all over its website. Lobbying in Washington is dirty business, which is why lobby shops eschew the term, euphemistically referring to their activity as "government affairs" or some such. Yet Tariq Mouawad titles himself "Co-ordinator, Lobbying Operations & Policy." Despite lobbying in Washington being a highly regulated business with routine public disclosures required, Mouawad has landed the top lobbying gig at Beltway Grid without ever having worked for any other lobbying firm, any other client, any member of Congress, or any administration. The same is true for Omar Khalil Haddad, listed as "Senior Researcher, Influence Networks & Tactics" and Dr. Yasmine Al-Hariri, "Head of Strategy & Influence Research."
Another giveaway as to the maker of think tank is its liberal use of the term "5th Generation Warfare"—a favorite of the Pakistan military, a term that in Rawalpindi more or less considers mean posts about its army chief, Asim Munir, to be threats to national security. Beltway Grid Policy Centre takes 5th Generation Warfare very seriously. Staffers Elijah Bowers and Lina Abi-Saab hold positions, "Research Specialist, 5th Generation Warfare" and "Policy Analyst, 5th Generation Warfare," respectively.
The easiest employee of Beltway Grid to reach ought to be Fiona Hartley, who is said to serve as "director of public affairs and media strategy" for Beltway Grid but the only findable Fiona Hartley works for a magazine in England. Despite the English spelling of “centre,” she doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Beltway Grid.
The D.C. beltway, by the way, is not a grid, and Washington’s streets are infamously not laid out in a coherent grid, but rather sliced through with diagonals. If we hear back from Hartley or anybody else, we will update this report.
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A real think-tank suddenly gets millions of dollars
As Donald Trump prepares to take oath as the president of the United States, the Pakistani military has been scrambling for influence in Washington after being close to the Biden administration, which overlooked its human rights abuses for the past 2 years. The fake DC think-tank Beltway Grid, whose website domain was registered on October 11 of last year, seems to be part of a covert effort to shape U.S. policy in Pakistan’s favor by spreading disinformation online as a means of influencing mainstream discourse.
The use of fabricated think tanks to disseminate such narratives is a cheap and common tactic. A previous investigation by Drop Site revealed that the Pakistani military itself was deputizing its own officers to post online using fictitious identities, as part of a program known as the "Army Agahi Network." Following the publication of Drop Site's report, the Pakistani government throttled the internet in the country and influencers linked to the military regime began issuing threats of legal action to shut down further coverage.
The EU DisinfoLab's 2020 investigation, "Indian Chronicles," uncovered a 15-year operation involving fake NGOs and media outlets designed to influence international institutions and public opinion by the Indian government. Despite growing scrutiny of the practice, foreign states seeking to sway global public opinion have continued to invest heavily in the cheap yet dubious tactic of spreading fake information online, including by running troll farms aimed at shaping discourse on social media.
Pakistan is also clearly investing in Washington influence with the incoming Trump administration. The Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), a prominent think tank closely associated with the Pakistani military, recently engaged the U.S. lobbying firm Team Eagle Consulting at a substantial fee of $1.5 million per year. This expenditure is particularly striking given that, according to anonymous sources within IPRI, the institute's annual budget traditionally ranges between $200,000 to $300,000. Another organization listed in the FARA documents registering the contract, Hyperfocal Communications, announced in October on that it had begun working on building a consortium whose, "primary goal is to reshape the U.S. public narrative about Pakistan and build enduring relationships with current and future administrations"—specifically through creating a "grassroots movement" in the diaspora that will become "a political force across the United States."
The decision to hire a U.S. lobbying firm coincides with efforts to counteract growing influence from opposition groups in the U.S., particularly supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan that have lobbied members of Congress for the past two years about human rights violations by the Pakistani military-backed government. This development suggests a strategic move by the Pakistani military establishment to bolster its narrative and influence within U.S. policy circles, utilizing IPRI as a conduit for these endeavors.
Sources close to the Pakistani military suggest rising unease within Pakistan’s military establishment regarding potential shifts in U.S. policy under a Trump administration. The Pakistani military establishment has instructed the civilian government to engage another Washington-based PR firm to help repair the administration’s image following the brutal suppression of protestors in Islamabad in November last year and to counter growing criticism from the vocal Pakistani diaspora in the U.S. A dedicated committee has been formed to oversee this initiative, signaling the seriousness of the effort.
The Pakistani government has also announced that it was setting aside the equivalent of an addition $7 million to "fight fake information against state institutions." The military has repeatedly prioritized the fight against what it calls fake news, even while it continues to employ its own fake accounts on social media.
In recent weeks, Richard Grenell, tapped to be Trump's presidential envoy for special missions, has been outspoken in his call for the release of Imran Khan from prison in Pakistan. Allies of the Pakistan military, shaken by the sudden reversal of fortune, responded with a novel argument: the X account posting as Richard Grenell was not, in fact, Richard Grenell, they argued, but instead a fake account produced to sow discord in Pakistan. Drop Site can confirm, however, that Grenell's account truly is Grenell. Every accusation, the saying goes, is a confession.
But who knows? Perhaps the Beltway Grid Policy Centre's next report may persuade us otherwise.
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AN 11 24 BAdash
a top national security specialist with expertise on Russia and nuclear weapons is warning about two individuals reportedly being considered for the role of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President-elect Donald Trump.
Richard Grenell, the former Trump acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and U.S. Ambassador to Germany, has been “suggested for a role such as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he may be urged by Trump to unearth the so-called ‘deep state,'” CNN reported Thursday.
Also in the running for Director of CIA is Kash Patel, CNN reports, “a former Trump national security official who is helping organize the next administration’s transition.”
“Patel himself has told associates that he wants to be CIA director, people briefed on the matter say. It would be a triumph after Trump contemplated in his final months in office putting Patel in key jobs at FBI or CIA. That idea was blocked by opposition from then CIA Director Gina Haspel and [Attorney General Bill] Barr.”
READ MORE: ‘Someone’s Got to Run the Deportation Camps’: Prison Stocks Soar as Trump Agenda Unfolds
“Patel and Trump,” CNN adds, “are both vowing to oust officials who played any role in investigations of Trump and his supporters. Trump has vowed to fire Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed in 2017 after firing James Comey, and whose 10-year term has more than two years remaining.”
In 2022, Grenell was accused by Olivia Troye, a national security expert with decades of experience, of having “tried to get Mike Pence to attend a white supremacist gathering during one of his overseas trips.” Troye served in the Trump White House as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Pence. Her remark was in response to a comment by U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who had said Grenell “used to hang out with Nazis when he was supposed to be representing us in Germany.”
NCRM has not confirmed the allegations.
“Grenell has been acting as a kind of shadow secretary of state,meeting with far-right leaders and movements, pledging Trump’s support and, at times, working against the current administration’s policies,” along with “attacking President Biden,” The Washington Post reported in March. It also reported Trump had been calling Grenell, “my envoy.”
The paper detailed Grenell had “arrived in Guatemala in January, days before the new president was to be sworn in — and threw his support behind aright-wing campaign to undermine the election.”
“Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration,” and, “defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes in an effort to overturn a vote declared ‘free and fair’ by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.”
READ MORE: ‘Under Attack’: Newsom Preps to Protect California From Trump
“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”
The Post also reported that “Grenell’s globe-trotting has sparked deep concern among career national security officials and diplomats, who warn that he emboldens bad actors and jeopardizes U.S. interests in service of Trump’s personal agenda. In the process, Grenell is openly charting a foreign policy road map for a Republican presidential nominee who has found common cause with authoritarian leaders and threatened to blow up partnerships with democratic allies.”
In 2020, when Grenell was serving as Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence, ProPublica reported, “Richard Grenell’s past clients could raise concerns about his access to state secrets, according to his own office’s rules.”
Grenell had “worked as a paid publicist for a foundation funded by Hungary’s increasingly authoritarian government — his second former client to prompt scrutiny because Grenell did not disclose the work.”
“In 2016, the Magyar Foundation of North America paid Grenell’s consulting firm, Capitol Media Partners, $103,750 for ‘public relations’ services, according to the foundation’s tax filing. The foundation was funded and supervised by Hungary’s government, according to records obtained by the Hungarian nonprofit news organization Atlatszo. The foundation’s director, Jo Anne Barnhart, had been a registered lobbyist for Prime Minister Viktor Orban,” ProPublica revealed.
“Grenell, however, did not register, even though public relations work on behalf of a foreign government falls squarely under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to lawyers specializing in the matter. FARA is the same law that Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and former deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, were convicted of violating.”
Tom Nichols, the retired Naval War College professor who has a PhD in government from Georgetown University and is now a writer at The Atlantic, on Thursday weighed in on news Grenell and Patel are potential picks to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
“During a crisis – say, a nuclear crisis – the DCIA [Director of the Central Intelligence Agency] is supposed to be one of the key people with a firm grip on data and solid judgment to advise the President on what to do next. Appointing inexperienced, loyalist clowns is not a big deal at some agencies. Not this one.”
Asked, what “Defcon level are we at now?” Nichols replied, “Well, I referred to this time as a national emergency, just as the last Trump administration was.”
Dr. Norman Ornstein, Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, responded to Nichols: “Not just inexperienced and clowns, people who cannot be trusted with secrets, especially our most significant ones.”
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an 4 24
host from MSNBC on Saturday feuded with Donald Trump’s former intelligence officer Richard Grenell, who is reportedly now acting as a “shadow secretary of State” for the former president.
It started with a video of MSNBC's Alex Wagner reporting on Kash Patel, the former Chief of Staff to Trump's Secretary of defense. According to the report, he promised to go after people in the media, and is being considered for Attorney General in a potential second term for Trump.
Wagner called Patel's consideration as head of the DOJ "the most alarming detail" in a recent report about a second Trump presidency.
Conservative podcaster Benny Johnson shared the video of Wagner's broadcast on social media, writing, "MSNBC is panicking over the possibility that Trump might pick Kash Patel to be Attorney General," with a laughing emoji.
Grenell, who Raw Story recently reported on in connection with his international affairs on Trump's behalf, shared Johnson's post and tagged Wagner with a caption that says, "Stop Asian Hate."
In a separate post, Grenell wrote, "Far Lefties always get away with being racist."
"Watch how [Wagner] goes out of her way to show her outrage that Kash Patel is being considered for AG 'OF THE UNITED STATES.' She’s so condescending that it’s the U.S. Watch for yourself."
Wagner then took it upon herself to reply.
"Oh Rick. Did you not know that I’m ASIAN AMERICAN?" the news host asked. "This is so embarrassing for you."
She added, "But not more embarrassing than having an utterly unqualified fascist in the running for Attorney General of the United States."
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an badash 3 24
last year House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer acknowledged former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House advisor Jared Kushner had “crossed the line” when he accepted $2 billion in foreign investment funds from the government of Saudi Arabia as he started up a private investment firm just months after leaving the White House.
Now, Chairman Comer says he will not open an investigation into any possible wrongdoing, Huffpost reports, despite top Democrats alleging Kushner engaged in “apparent influence peddling and quid pro quo deals.”
On Tuesday, the top Democrat on Comer’s Oversight Committee, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, and Democrat Robert Garcia, the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, formally requested Comer “convene a hearing regarding Jared Kushner’s apparent influence peddling and quid pro quo deals involving investments in exchange for official actions and to examine the resulting threats to our national security.”
“This Committee cannot claim to be ‘investigating foreign nationals’ attempts to target and coerce high-ranking U.S. officials’ family members by providing money or other benefits in exchange for certain actions while continuing to ignore these matters,” Raskin and Garcia wrote. “We therefore urge you to work with us to finally investigate Mr. Kushner’s receipt of billions of dollars from foreign governments in deals that appear to be quid pro quos for actions he undertook as senior White House adviser in Donald Trump’s Administration.”
READ MORE: Greene Says She Won’t Take Responsibility if Johnson Loses Speaker’s Gavel Before Election
The American people are deeply concerned about these business dealings and Mr. Kushner’s apparent influence peddling. We must address
those concerns with a fair, impartial, and public process to understand the truth and to institute meaningful reforms to safeguard public confidence in our executive branch.”
The two Democrats in their letter say their “request comes in light of allegations that Jared Kushner is pursuing new foreign business deals, just as Donald Trump becomes the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency. Last year, well before these new allegations came to light, Chairman Comer had already conceded that Jared Kushner’s conduct ‘crossed the line of ethics’ and promised that the Oversight Committee would ‘have some questions for Trump and some of his family members, including Jared Kushner.'”
Raskin and Garcia paint a picture of “Kushner’s pattern of profiting off of his time in the White House.”
Citing The New York Times (apparentlythis article), they write, “Jared Kushner was closing in on investments in Albania and Serbia, leveraging relationships he built during his time as a senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House. Reportedly, Mr. Kushner is considering an investment on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense.”
“Mr. Kushner is reportedly being advised by Richard Grenell, another former senior Trump Administration official who served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany and, concomitantly, as ‘special envoy for peace negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo.’ Mr. Grenell reportedly ‘pushed a related plan’ for redevelopment of the same site during his time in the Trump Administration.”
READ MORE: Trump Says He Thinks He’s ‘Allowed’ to Accept Foreign Money to Pay Fines
“In pursuing investment opportunities in Albania, Mr. Grenell and Mr. Kushner have been openly leveraging their relationship with Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of Albania. While Commander-in-Chief, President Trump received unconstitutional payments from Prime Minister Rama and other senior Albanian government officials who spent thousands of dollars at theTrump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., over three separate stays,” Raskin and Garcia write.
They also allege, “Mr. Kushner successfully overruled State Department officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to make President Trump’s first foreign trip as President to Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kushner personally intervened to inflate the value of a U.S.-Saudi arms deal and to finalize the deal President Trump signed, which was worth $110 billion. Mr. Kushner
also provided diplomatic cover and support to the Crown Prince after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American permanent resident and journalist. Mr. Khashoggi’s murder was assessed by American Intelligence to have been approved by the Crown Prince himself.”
Despite their extensive allegations, Chairman Comer is refusing to open an investigation.
“Unlike the Bidens, Jared Kushner has a legitimate business and has a career as a business executive that predates Donald Trump’s political career,” Comer said, as HuffPost reports. “Democrats’ latest letter is part of their playbook to shield President Biden from oversight.”
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an 3 24
Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law's presidential campaign.
A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner's real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they're completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump's former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.
Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president's immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn't involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.
READ MORE:**Trump took millions from China, Saudi Arabia, other foreign governments as POTUS: report**
Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner's departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The former president's son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver's seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi's assassination).
The Times quoted an unnamed source who claimed that Grenell — whose Balkan connections likely helped Kushner secure his business deals in Albania and Serbia — hopes to be appointed secretary of state should Trump retake the presidency in November. Public Citizen president Robert Weissman called on Kushner to "freeze any new investment plans" pending the result of the election, saying they were unethical given his father-in-law's ongoing campaign.
"This particular investment plan seems to involve the worst of every corrupt tendency of the Trump administration and Trump family," Weissman told the Times.
READ MORE:**'Very big can of worms': Ex-prosecutor says Trump may seek 'foreign' help to pay judgments**
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden's son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son's favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.
Comer and Jordan both relied heavily on a confidential FBI informant's testimony in what's known as a "1023 report" as the basis of their investigations, in which both Joe and Hunter Biden were accused of soliciting $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian officials. However, the source of that report, Alexander Smirnov, was later indicted for lying to investigators regarding that claim, and he has since been exposed as having contact with "high-ranking" members of Russian intelligence agencies.
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mma 1 24
on January 29, Newsweek published an article titled “Biden Military Draft Rumors Swirl After Iran Attacks” despite providing just four social media posts as evidence supporting this alarmist headline.
The article quotes posts to X (formerly Twitter) from former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell (who played a key role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Nevada and has spread misinformation online in the past) and from Robert J. O’Neill, a former U.S. Navy SEAL. Both of their posts speculate about the possibility of Biden reinstating the draft.
“Biden means more wars and a possible draft for young U.S. men and women,” wrote Grenell, “Trump means peace deals.”
:{While the piece finally notes in its 11th paragraph (of 13 in total) that “there has been no confirmation that Biden is interested in a military draft,” :{it goes on to claim that “a number of other social media users speculated on the idea.”}: As evidence for this, Newsweek cites two X users whose claims include that “Joe Biden wants a WW3 so the democrats can stay in power” and that “Biden's draft had better include men, women, and all of those letters Biden's America has dreamed up.” (These two posts have garnered a combined 27 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.)[twt]
the article was also shared by Arizona state House candidate Nick Kupper in a post to X. He wrote: “I’ve been saying it for a long time now. Biden will start a war & institute a draft this year before the election.”}:
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ref 1 mma
PUBLISHED 01/08/21
After a violent mob sought to overthrow by force a national election victory of the Democratic Party, Fox News is busy working to salvage its own long-running propaganda campaign — and push for changes in voting laws to restrict Americans’ access to the ballot box.
President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to physically prevent Congress from counting the Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden, after they had attended a rally at which Trump spoke and told them: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
Fox News played a major role both before and immediately after the 2020 election in promoting President Donald Trump’s disproven conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud, which became the ideological basis for the attempted insurrection by a pro-Trump mob in the U.S. Capitol. And the network’s hosts are still keeping up the cause.
Fox’s prime-time hosts stand by the voter-suppression agenda: “The urgent push for election integrity will continue.”
Kicking off Fox’s prime-time coverage on the evening of January 6, Tucker Carlson validated the paranoid accusations from the Capitol insurrectionists.
“Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy. You can call them conspiracy theorists. You can kick them off Twitter. But that won't change their minds,” Carlson said. “Rather than trying to change their minds, to convince them and reassure them that the system is real, that the democracy works, as you would do if you cared about the country or the people who live here, our new leaders will try to silence them.”
Video
CitationFrom the January 6, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
Sean Hannity delivered a 10-minute diatribe in which he claimed both that the overwhelming majority — “the 99%, as we say” — of people at the event were peaceful protesters motivated by concerns about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“And let me state the obvious, for the safety of those people that worked there and law enforcement, our elected officials — the people who acted violently today, they don't represent the millions of law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying citizens, responsible American patriots that are worried about election integrity,” Hannity said, adding: “Now, does anybody in the media, anybody on the left, do they want to understand how hundreds of thousands of Americans, what motivated them to leave their homes and their towns and their cities and often fly or come long distances to be at the massive rally today?”
At the end of listing a long series of debunked accusations about the election, Hannity concluded: “People have a right to be angry but protest peacefully. And the urgent push for election integrity will continue.”
Video
CitationFrom the January 6, 2021, edition of Fox News’ Hannity
Later, Hannity had a discussion with Trump’s former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell and Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz. Grenell, who was heavily involved in the Trump campaign’s unsuccessful efforts to overturn Biden’s win in Nevada, repeated a number of falsehoods about the election and then called for “transparency” in order to assuage people’s suspicions on “whether or not the vote was real.”
Chaffetz, a former member of Congress from Utah, also called for people to get involved in affecting the election laws in their home states.
“You’ve got to work on your state legislators and go back to your statehouses,” said Chaffetz. “Those are the places where you have to hold people accountable. That's what the Constitution says. That's where we execute these elections, and that's where we need to focus to really institute change.”
At the end of the show, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp claimed that voters had been “disenfranchised due to this corruption in our election process.” (Schlapp had also been involved with Grenell in Nevada and had attempted to incite riots aimed at stopping the ongoing vote counts the day after the election.)
“Nothing justifies the violence and the disrespect to the cops today. But we're at a bad moment as a country,” Schlapp said. “We're going to have to figure out how we heal from here — and it starts with telling the truth about the election.”
“We need to get to the bottom-line issues here,” Hannity answered. “Every American needs faith, confidence, and integrity in our elections. That's just a fact.”
Fox News host Laura Ingraham then kicked off her broadcast by claiming that “antifa sympathizers” had been involved at the violence in the Capitol — and that this event threatened to harm the real objective of changing the voting laws.
Video
CitationFrom the January 6, 2021, edition of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): I'm Laura Ingraham and this is The Ingraham Angle from a chaotic Washington tonight. Earlier today, the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. Now they were likely not all Trump supporters and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. We'll have more on that later.
But the point remains, if you were a Trump supporter hoping to display your support for the president, well today's antics at the Capitol did just the opposite. There are legitimate concerns about how these elections were conducted and in the middle of a pandemic with all the new restrictions, but that never should have lent any license to violence or other chaos. We need meaningful reform.
So, should we curb expansive mail-in-voting or ballot harvesting and demand votes be counted day-of? You bet we should. Should we end the idea of jungle primaries and a 50% threshold to avoid a runoff? Absolutely. And should we prosecute all voter fraud? Of course.
But political passions boiled over today, and it will only serve to make the lives of MAGA supporters more difficult and even imperil this movement they fought so hard for.
Ingraham later had a lengthy discussion with Reps. Mark Green (R-TN), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Lee Zeldin (R-NY), in which Ingraham asked about Republicans who were “deciding that election reform is not worth pursuing tonight after what happened today.” After the three congressmen spouted a variety of debunked accusations about the election returns, Ingraham concluded the topic by saying, “And those questions have never been resolved. They've never been resolved. They’ve just been kind of dismissed as conspiracy theories.”
Fox’s “news side” also focused on the “real issues” of manipulating the election laws
On the early evening news show The Story, anchor Martha MacCallum interviewed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who strongly opposed the Trump supporters’ effort to reject the electoral votes and claimed such efforts need to take place at the state level: “I have a lot of the same complaints. I want the elections to be better. But I’ll spend the next two years lobbying state legislatures to try to fix the election laws so this doesn’t happen again.” (In December, Paul had declared: “the fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen and the only way it'll be fixed is by, in the future, reinforcing the laws.”)
MacCallum voiced her agreement with Paul’s stance, saying, “There are real issues that people have been fired up about, and I think rightfully so.”
CitationFrom the January 6, 2021, edition of Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum
MARTHA MACCALLUM (ANCHOR): I think there's two elements to what you're talking about. And when you do look at the constitutional issues that arose in places like Pennsylvania, where you have a legislature that was overruled by the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, that is a real constitutional issue. I don't understand why the Supreme Court didn't take that up. It is a clear question about how the Constitution should dominate in that issue.
So, there are real issues that people have been fired up about, and I think rightfully so. On the other hand, you're also saying that people should never have thought that this could be overturned once each state — because the states have the power to certify their own electoral college.
Toward the end of the discussion, MacCallum asked Paul: “So you think even though Republicans will not have a majority in the Senate, that these things — that these vote fixes can be pushed through Republican state legislatures and will make a difference by the time the 2022 elections roll around?”
Fox News @ Night anchor Shannon Bream spoke about the day’s events with Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), a lawmaker who had just voted to object to the electoral votes from Arizona, a state Biden won. When Banks said that he was planning to propose legislation to roll back voting access — such as banning all mail-in ballots — Bream responded approvingly, saying that Trump supporters had “a great deal of frustration” about the election.
“And I think that's something that people across the political spectrum wants for Americans to have confidence in their elections,” she concluded.
Video
CitationFrom the January 6, 2021, edition of Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream
And it continued into Thursday
On Thursday morning’s edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Ainsley Earhardt compared Wednesday’s events to last summer’s wave of civil unrest over issues of police violence and racial justice. In each case, she said, society should learn something from the grievances at hand.
“What can we learn from this? They want election reform,” Earhardt said. “We need to find a way to fix the election system so that every single American has faith in the election and trust and that there is integrity.”
Co-host Steve Doocy also told Earhardt: “But here's the thing, those people were so frustrated because they had been told by the president of the United States that the election was stolen from him and that the system was rigged against him.”
Just to be clear, Fox has long championed voter restriction laws that disproportionately harm minority voters, and it continued to do so through this past election cycle. Fox has also been a main vendor of the circular logic in which Fox figures cite widespread suspicion among Trump supporters about the election result, while also being the ones pushing the propaganda campaign against the election result.
Video
CitationFrom the January 7, 2021, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends
Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth also defended the rioters as people who “love freedom,” and also listed the expanded mail-in voting in 2020 as a legitimate grievance they supposedly had.
“We're always told — and this is legitimate, this is the way republics are supposed to work — you get them at the ballot box. You come back two years later, and you get them at the ballot box,” Hegseth said. “Well, and then what happens when you don't have that recourse? What happens when they use COVID as a guise to change all the guidelines constitutionally? We could've voted in person. I can go to Walmart. I can go to a store. I can go to a restaurant. I can go to sports games in some places. You tell me we couldn't have voted? I just don't buy it.”
Schlapp appeared again with Fox Business host Stuart Varney — who once proclaimed that he did not think Trump has ever lied. During the discussion, Varney declared that the lame-duck president was “done politically” after yesterday’s event. The two went on to argue over the fact that Trump was now still falsely telling his supporters that he had really won the election, as Varney pointed out but Schlapp continued to dispute.
At the end, though, they did agree that voting laws need to be changed:
Video
CitationFrom the January 7, 2021, edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co.
On Outnumbered that afternoon, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren vowed that “what was done yesterday by storming the Capitol and being destructive, and being really disorderly and disgusting, that behavior really overshadowed the movement. And I ask those fellow Trump supporters of mine, that’s not the answer, that did nothing, that set us back.”
“We do need to listen to the frustrations of Trump supporters, though, because we really have to make sure that moving forward we do have integrity in our elections,” Lahren said. “I will continue to beat that drum. What happened yesterday does not take away from that fight that’s left ahead of us. We’re just going to do it the right way.”
Video
CitationFrom the January 7, 2021, edition of Fox News’ Outnumbered
Fox News host Mark Levin had previously asserted on his radio show that there was a “desperate effort to tie Donald Trump to the breaching of the Capitol building.” On his radio show Thursday night, he spoke with a caller who urged “all the other Trump supporters out there” to contact their state legislatures to change the voting laws, “so that we can restore integrity in our elections.”
“Well, I agree with you,” Levin said. “And we're going to have figure out, once those laws are changed, how to defend them, because they're going to go right back to the same courts and the same governors and secretaries of state that changed them.”
“And so I would encourage you, yes, contact your state representative and your state senator,” Levin added, “You may not even know who it is — go ahead and Google and find out — and insist you want voter-ID, you want in-person voting, you only want absentee voting under certain, limited conditions, you want to eliminate these drop boxes, and eliminate mail-in voting.”
Mark Levin: Respond to the January 6 insurrection by calling your state legislators, “insist you want voter-ID … and eliminate mail-in voting”
JANUARY 7, 2021
Audio
CitationFrom the January 7, 2021, edition of Westwood One’s The Mark Levin Show
Having done its part to sow distrust in the institutions and processes of democracy, the network is now making distinctions between the “right” and “wrong” ways to destroy the electoral processes and undermine the will of the people.
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PUBLISHED 11/02/20
A Fox News host and a former Trump administration official are spreading disinformation on Twitter, claiming that a photo shows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden hypocritically not wearing a mask on a plane — though the photo was taken in late 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic began.
Richard Grenell, who served this year as President Donald Trump’s acting director of national intelligence after having been a longtime Fox News commentator, posted the misleading photo Sunday on Twitter.
A fact check by Reuters traced the photo to a newly published article in Vogue magazine, profiling the Biden campaign’s traveling national press secretary Remi Yamamoto — but the caption says the photo was taken “on a flight to South Carolina in November 2019.”
Fox News host Mark Levin shared Grenell’s tweet, calling Biden’s supposed action “fraud.”
This isn’t Grenell’s first time spreading false or misleading information. During his tenure as director of national intelligence, he selectively declassified information relating to the investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, in an attempt to make it appear as if the Obama administration had acted improperly. And though there was nothing there, right-wing media ran with Trump’s “Obamagate” narrative.
A few months after leaving the intelligence post in May, Grenell became a senior adviser to the Republican National Committee on LGBT issues.
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gl 1 24 news
CNN
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huh?
https://www.mediamatters.org/blazetv/blazetv-host-steve-deace-blasts-ric-grenell-trumps-homosexual-enforcer-who-wants-other
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ref no lnx
https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-donald-trump-cant-make-sense-of-his-own-dark-money-maze
[Pay Dirt is a weekly foray into the pigpen of political funding. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
An inquiry from the feds has thrown new light on the murky relationships between a dozen Trump-aligned groups. And the problem traces back, as do so many other problems in Trumpworld, to a familiar name: former top aide Corey Lewandowski.
When Lewandowski got himself fired from a pro-Trump super PAC last fall—after allegedly sexually assaulting a big donor—the group brought in a clean-up crew. When Lewandowski refused to step down, they opened up a new super PAC without him.
That super PAC—the preposterously titled “Make America Great Again, Again!”—was the 12th in a sprawling labyrinth of political groups and nonprofitsthat comprise the Trump fundraising network. And in terms of the incestuous confusion, it may have been the one that finally tipped the scales; federal election officials now want to know why some of the super PAC’s payments aren’t being properly reported.
[Trump’s Dark-Money Machine Gets a Makeover—and New Owners
BILL OF GOODS
Roger Sollenberger]
Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of good government group Documented, said the extent of Trump’s network is unparalleled.
“It is worth emphasizing: All of this is totally unprecedented for a former president,” Fischer told The Daily Beast. “Even if Trump kept it simple, and just had one hard money PAC, a single super PAC, and a pair of 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) nonprofits, there would be no parallel with any former president in American history.”
Anyone who’s taken even the quickest of peeks at Trump’s personal financial disclosures would recognize the pattern.
His first such disclosure revealed positions with more than 500 entities, nearly 400 of which used his name or initials. And Trump has “organized” the mess in a stultifying Russian-nesting-doll structure—companies within companies within companies. Frequently, one company will be held under multiple Trump companies at the same time, each with stakes in still other Trump companies.
This isn’t an accident. The structure gave the Trump Organization an enormous amount of financial flexibility, while making it difficult to follow the billions of dollars that Trump, his family, and his accountants move across the organization.
When Trump hauled his private life into politics, he brought this practice with him, too.
The full Trump-aligned apparatus counts a dozen separate political committees and dark money organizations. Almost all of them share one of three names.
Here they are:
Make America Great Again PAC (converted from the old Trump campaign)
Make America Great Again Action (super PAC)
Make America Great Again, Again! (super PAC)
Trump Make America Great Again (small-dollar joint fundraising committee)
Make America Great Again Policies Inc (a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)
America First Policy Institute (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)
America First Works (formerly America First Policies; a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)
America First Legal Foundation (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)
America First Action (super PAC)
Save America (leadership PAC)
Save America JFC (joint fundraising committee)
Trump Victory (high-dollar joint fundraising committee)
“Typically, former presidents focus on their presidential library, or start a charitable foundation, but Trump is staying in the political game and raising a staggering amount of cash,” Fischer said.
It is staggering.
Want a closer look inside the pockets of the government’s most powerful players? Subscribe to the Pay Dirt newsletter here for exclusive reporting every Thursday.
For instance, the Trump-endorsed America First Action super PAC pulled in nearly $200 million between 2017 and 2020. Its sister nonprofit, America First Works—formerly America First Policies—posted $51.3 million in revenue for 2020, doling out nearly $40 million in grants.
[Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons
BEG YOUR PARDON
Roger Sollenberger]
The TMAGA PAC raised $884 million for 2020, with Trump Victory tossing in another $336.3 million. Those guns mostly fell quiet last year, while Trump’s three new PACs built up a $124.4 million stash, with another $12.5 million in the MAGAA! super PAC.
And we won’t know how much those other dark money nonprofits raised in 2021, or what they did with it, until after the midterms.
As Trump and the Republican Party gear up for 2024, these groups are in various stages of repair. However, that also appears to have created some internal problems. In fact, according to a filing on Wednesday, even the Trump campaign admits it isn’t always able to follow its own money.
Fischer chalked up the mess to a few factors, including Trump’s will-he-or-won’t-he candidate status, his relationship with the Republican National Committee, and disarray among his associates.
But Brett Kappel, a specialist in campaign finance and nonprofit law at Harmon Curran, perceived something more designed.
“The central lesson of Watergate is ‘Follow the money,’” Kappel told The Daily Beast. “And this byzantine structure of different types of legal entities—which are subject to different fundraising restrictions and file different reports with different agencies according to different filing schedules—appears to be designed to make that task as difficult as possible.”
To illustrate, these organizations can be divided into two groups: PACs and joint fundraising committees, and “dark money” nonprofits.
The PACS and joint fundraising committees are Trump’s political organizations. They disclose their finances to the Federal Election Commission. But they don’t all follow the same filing schedule, and, depending on what kind of committee they actually are, they can raise and transfer different amounts of money from different types of people and organizations.
[The GOP Dark Money Group Giving Big to White Supremacists
UNWORTHY CAUSES
Roger Sollenberger]
Of these groups, Save America leadership PAC is currently Trump’s main squeeze. Most of the money he raises goes there.The Save America JFC is a joint committee that splits donations between Save America and MAGA PAC, which used to be the Trump campaign. Weirdly, MAGA PAC doesn’t get much out of this joint arrangement—more than 90 percent of every contribution goes to the Save America PAC.
And the super PACs are, as mentioned above, something of a mess.
As for the “dark money” nonprofits, unlike the PACs, these groups file with the IRS. They don’t have to disclose their donors at all (hence “dark money”). They also only file once a year, and because those deadlines are so late, it can take nearly two years for a transaction to become visible to the public.
The IRS restricts their activities, too. Some groups have leeway to be political (the 501(c)(4) groups). Some must focus on social welfare (the 501(c)(3) groups). The Trump network has a healthy helping of both.
Sometimes, however, these PACs and nonprofits can overlap, even sharing employees and office space, like America First Action and America First Policies did during the Trump administration.[shuffle?]
And while they appear to be giving that another go, as the FEC found, it hasn’t been so clean this time.
Enter Lewandowski.
After Trump left the White House, the industriously sycophantic Lewandowski wormed his way back into his graces, winning the right to run the Make America Great Again Action super PAC. At the same time, he quietly created a Florida nonprofit, Make America Great Again Policies Inc.
But MAGA Policies didn’t appear to do anything—at all. There has been no reporting on any actual activity since it was created. Zero. It is a black box.
Then Lewandowski reportedly sexually assaulted a Trump donor and got himself booted from orbit. More experienced hands took over the new MAGAA! super PAC, led by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, and that also got complicated.
[Trump PAC Lavishing $37K a Month on Trump Tower Rent: WaPo
DONATIONS WELL SPENT
According to a new corporate filing in Florida, Bondi—who also happens to lead the massive America First Policy Institute nonprofit—also took over Lewandowski’s mysterious MAGA Policies nonprofit, adding former Trump administration officials Ric Grenelland Matt Whitaker, as well as Donald Trump Jr. paramour Kimberly Guilfoyle. All of those people are also on the new super PAC’s payroll.
But here’s the rub: The super PAC hasn’t been paying them directly. The nonprofit has, as part of a “cost share agreement.”
On Tuesday, the FEC sent the super PAC a letter saying that’s not cutting it. The group needs to explain exactly what they mean by “cost share agreement,” the letter said, because what they provided is not adequate.
Kappel said the FEC may be trying to figure out whether the two groups are “financially and operationally independent.” If the super PAC was found to be “connected” to the MAGA Policies nonprofit, he said, that meansit can only raise money from people tied to the nonprofit—and not from the general public. That would be a death blow, and the group would be forced to reorganize itself yet again.
Fischer said he wouldn’t be surprised to see more groups strategically shut down, like Trump Victory began doing last year.
“It might be more straightforward for Trump to shut down MAGA PAC,” he said, though he pointed out that MAGA PAC appears to own the campaign’s valuable supporter data, which might make it more cost-effective to retain for joint fundraising efforts.
But, Fischer pointed out, even though the constellation of Trump-aligned groups is basically unnavigable, it always could have been worse.
“Recall that Brad Parscale also started the ‘American Greatness’ super PAC in 2021, which never really got off the ground,” he said.
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former Trump official: Biden choosing first Black woman justice bars 'Hispanics, Asians and gays'
David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement
January 28, 2022
A highly-controversial former Trump official is claiming President Joe Biden's promise to seat the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court is discriminatory.
Richard Grenell, who served as Trump's Acting Director...
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fbi 250K$ reward for KK?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/trump-russia-campaign/
max Boot, a Russian-American author and historian and a fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations,says the U.S. Intel Community's just-released report on Russia's attack on the 2020 presidential election is "evidence of cooperation" – at least – between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
The report details that Russian President Vladimir Putin once again interfered in the election, again to help President Donald Trump, and to hurt now-President Joe Biden.
"I would say this is certainly evidence," Boot says, "it may be evidence of collusion, but it's definitely evidence of cooperation and congruence between the Russians and the Trump campaign."
Boot praised the Biden administration for authorizing the release of the report, which he says Americans would not have seen under the Trump administration, while singling out Acting Trump DNI and DNI Rick Grinnell and John Ratcliffe, who "consistently tried to minimize and downplay Russian election interference."
Importantly, Boot notes the report shows "just how closely the Russian messaging during the election echoed the messaging of the Trump campaign of Fox News and this kind of whole right wing media industrial complex."
"It's fascinating to see the extent to which the Russians were pushing the same messages about alleged Biden corruption, about his supposedly corrupt son, about you can't trust mail-in ballots, that the Democratic Party is trying to interfere with the election. These were the things that Trump was saying, but these were also the things that the Russians were saying, and in fact, the report highlights the close ties between Russian agents of influence like Andrii Derkach from Ukraine. Ukraine and Rudy Giuliani the president's lawyer, Konstantin Kilimnik is another one, who is a former business partner of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, so these ties are a copious and disturbing and to use a word we haven't heard in a few years, I would say this is certainly evidence. If not, it may be evidence of collusion, but it's definitely evidence of cooperation and and congruence between the Russians and the Trump campaign."
Watch...
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/russia-intelligence-trump/
DC rept
Lost in the news on the day of Trump's Insurrection was a devastating new watchdog report to Congress on the politicizing and distorting of intelligence during Donald Trump's time in office.
The analytic ombudsman, career intelligence community veteran Barry A. Zulauf, determined that under Trump national intelligence reports had become highly politicized. Important findings were suppressed to appease Trump's refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in American elections.
Zulauf's unclassified report paints a frightening picture of just how much the Trump administration skewed intelligence to suppress knowledge of interference by Russia in our 2020 elections.
From March 2020, in the critical months leading up to the elections, Zulauf "identified a long story arc of—at the very least—perceived politicization of intelligence."
Zulauf works in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a Cabinet-level position created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to oversee all U.S. intelligence operations. Zulauf's job within the ODNI was created by Congress to assist analysts throughout the intelligence community with complaints and concerns about politicization, biased reporting or lack of objectivity in intelligence analysis.
This is the first of a two-part series. Coming in Part 2: The intelligence community under Trump was not alone in diverting focus from Russian interference.
Zulauf determined that Trump's ODNI took "willful actions that… had the effect of politicizing intelligence, hindering objective analysis or injecting bias into the intelligence process."
While Zulauf tried to avoid specifically naming individuals responsible for much of the political heavy-handed rewriting, he repeatedly calls out actions taken by two recent Trump appointees, neither of whom had any chops as intelligence experts.
One is former an acting director, Richard Grenell. He had been a Fox News commentator and Trump-appointed ambassador to Germany, and took over the ODNI in February 2020 then relinquished the post the following May.
The second was the Texas congressman Trump appointed to replace Grenell, John Ratcliffe, best known as a fervent defender of the ex-president in his first impeachment.
In one particularly egregious example, Zulauf wrote, Ratcliffe insisted on highlighting Chinese election interference while downplaying Russian efforts.
"Ratcliffe just disagreed with the established analytic line on China, insisting 'we are missing' China's influence in the US and that Chinese actions ARE intended to affect the election," Zulauf wrote. "Ultimately the DNI insisted on putting material on China in…. As a result, the final published [assessment], analysts felt, was an outrageous misrepresentation of their analysis."
The intelligence community has procedures to make sure assessments are based on sound judgment by seasoned analysts, not rogue points of view especially when they are not supported by facts.
The Senate Intelligence Committee requested the ombudsman review possible politicization of intelligence. Interestingly, Zulauf notes, he had his own review under way when the Senate Intelligence Committee request arrived. The ombudsman started his own investigation after he was approached by ombudsmen at three other agencies within the intelligence community. They acted because intelligence agency professionals and managers perceived problems and were getting internal complaints about the politicization of intelligence.
Helsinki Betrayal
The findings come 29 months after Trump declared in Helsinki, standing next to Vladimir Putin, that he trusted the Russian leader, but not the American intelligence services.
By putting his trust in Putin, a former KGB colonel, saying that he took him at his word when he denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election, Trump reiterated his denunciations of American intelligence services.
Trump refused on most days to sit for his intelligence briefing, a closely guarded summary of worldwide threats to America and its allies. The report is prepared by experienced analysts based on reports from 17 American intelligence agencies, which feed material to Central Intelligence Agency for consideration.
The Presidential Daily Brief is tailored to each sitting president's style. Trump's brief was reduced to simplistic points, often illustrated with graphics. Russian actions against the United States were often left out or described obliquely to avoid provoking Trump.
Trump would have found even simplified daily briefings difficult to grasp given his ignorance about geopolitical affairs and history. For example, he once asked aides if Finland was part of Russia. He met with the Baltic presidents and confused their countries with the Balkans.
Mueller's Warning
While Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III was barred from investigating Trump's conduct as a counterintelligence matter, his office did look into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller told the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees that Russia would continue interfering in our elections. "It was not a single attempt, [Russia's] doing it as we sit here," he testified. "And they expect to do it during the next campaign."
Yet eight months later, on March 10, 2020, in presenting the views of the intelligence community, Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), briefing members of Congress on election interference, said the opposite. He told lawmakers in a closed-door session for which summaries were released that there was no evidence that Russia had taken steps to help any candidate in the 2020 elections.
Analysts refer to talking points in these March statements, as well as subsequent statements in July, August and October of last year, as examples of "gross misrepresentation" of established intelligence community views.
The ombudsman's report attributes the rationale for these distortions and lies to the opposition they faced "getting their views on election interference across…in a confrontational environment."
But it does not assert that Trump directly ordered them. Several House managers noted during impeachment and Trump's better biographers have long noted, Trump gives direction the way mob bosses do, not by direct order but by relying on people to interpret a wink and a nod or even just tone of voice.
Misleading Congress
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/trump-administration/
vet admin rats eg grenell carnegie mellon?
ME
political appointees have a long history of moving into higher education after leaving White House administrations. However, universities are being urged to take extra steps to thoroughly vet former Trump administration officials before offering them future employment.
According to The Washington Post, faculty members and students at a number of universities across the United States believe collegiate institutions should "should apply more scrutiny to former Trump officials looking to make similar transitions."
The first wave of criticism came back in May when former Trump official Richard Grenell was granted a one-year fellowship by Carnegie Mellon University. An open letter was written to the university's administrators challenged the decision arguing that "a well-documented record of sexism and support for racist political movements." The criticism leveled at Grenell escalated in November when he publicly supported President Donald Trump's attempt to undermine the outcome of the presidential election.
At the time, Carnegie Mellon administrators defended its decision to hire Grenell but swiftly established committees to review Grenell's appointment and the university's policies in place for hiring. Jonathan Aldrich, a CMU professor and member of the committee put in place to review Grenell's hiring, offered an opinion from both perspectives.
He noted the difficulties that may arise in trying to vet potential hires in light of possible political disagreements. He also questioned whether or not political views would be held to the same standard as behavior and ethics.
"They're going to have to do the hard job of figuring out, even if we disagree with this person's politics, are our issues about politics, or are they about behavior?" Aldrich said, adding, "And maybe if there's serious doubt, we should give the benefit of the doubt to the person."
But despite the damaging impact of Trump's attempted coup, Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, argues that attempts to vet former Trump appointees before hiring them to work on college campuses could be akin to "a well with no bottom."
"I think it's likely to lead for a tit-for-tat campaign that's going to lead campuses basically scrambling to find somebody, anybody, who can talk interestingly about an issue without being subject to a de-platform campaign," he said.
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1120 an
ricGrenell and Matt Schlapp fled in a van when asked by Jacob Soboroff to present evidence of their claims of voter fraud.
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http://thetartan.org/2020/8/30/news/rick-grenell
stirs controv
Utkarsh | Aug 30, 2020
On June 9, the Institute for Politics and Strategy (IPS) at Carnegie Mellon announced the hiring of Richard Grenell as a Senior Fellow. Grenell had formerly served as the United States Ambassador to Germany and the acting Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration. The appointment sparked nearly instant backlash among students and faculty. Many felt Grenell’s divisive rhetoric, particularly on his Twitter account, had no place at Carnegie Mellon.
Much of Grenell’s controversial punditry takes place on Twitter. He frequently tweets in defense of President Donald Trump, calling the president’s June photo op at St. John's Church amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests “a triumphant moment of hope over fear.” He has called the coronavirus “the Chinese flu”, and he has supported anti-mask rhetoric in statements made after he officially began his position on July 1, which is at odds with official university policies
Some feel that even without his divisive rhetoric, Grenell’s record is questionable. He has been criticized for saying he wanted to “empower” Germany’s conservative movement while serving as the US ambassador to Germany, and he has strained relations with German diplomats. Grenell has been accused of failing to disclose payments he received from Vladimir Plahotniuc, a Moldovan oligarch accused of corruption by the United States. Grenell was also paid for consulting work at the Magyar Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit funded mostly by theHungarian government, without having registered the work under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Another point of contention for those against his appointment was that Grenell was hired after Carnegie Mellon implemented a hiring freeze.
In the weeks that followed, multiple petitions to rescind Grenell’s appointment made the rounds, including a faculty-led open letter with 325 faculty signatories and a student-led petition with 1505 signatures. In response to the calls to rescind Grenell’s hiring Director of IPS Kiron Skinner released a statement defending the department’s decision.
In the statement, Skinner said that the “Institute for Politics and Strategy is fully committed to intellectual diversity, which is the hallmark of the Academy” and that “as the nation’s first openly gay member of a president’s cabinet, a political conservative, a Christian, and a ten-year veteran of the State Department, Ambassador Grenell brings a unique perspective to the practice of US diplomacy and politics.”
Following Skinner’s statement, Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian released a statement backing the department’s decision, stating that “as an academic community that values the free exchange of ideas, we respect the variety of viewpoints expressed by members of the community on this matter.”
President Jahanian also announced the formation of a special committee to review whether the appointment was consistent with university practice. The committee’s report was made available in a campus-wide email from Jahanian on Aug. 20.
In an interview with The Tartan, Skinner elaborated on the department’s decision to hire Grenell. She clarified that Grenell would not be in a teaching position. Rather, he would engage the campus community on “intellectual and policy projects” focusing on the emergence of a “New Europe” and the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide through campus forums and seminars.
Skinner told The Tartan that it is standard to bring former government officials into academia, citing the Kennedy School’s appointment of Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski as fellows. “We’ve always had political figures and former officials on campus. This will be no different,” she said.
Skinner says she “hired [Grenell] not for his viewpoint but for his background.” She said that “his viewpoints would contribute to the diversity of thought” at Carnegie Mellon,opining that intellectual diversity is “where American academia is overall weakest.”She also emphasized that Grenell will be required to abandon his political views when he comes to campus.
In response to the controversy that surrounded Grenell’s appointment at IPS, Skinner stated “people who are writing petitions and letters and signing them are not coming to me to have a conversation to get a download on the facts about how and why I hired [Grenell].”
“There needs to be exhaustive research on the individual and what is being claimed about them and then we can return to our first amendment conversation,” she said.
Skinner added that it would be irresponsible for her to be the go-between for students and Grenell, saying she is “encouraging students to talk with Grenell themselves.” The Tartan requested comment from Grenell through IPS, but Grenell declined to comment.
In the faculty open letter opposing the hiring, the signatories disagreed with the administration’s use of the term academic freedom, stating “academic freedom does not in fact comprise an individual right to make appointments in a university, and it certainly does not remove the obligation to properly vet candidates for faculty positions (including visiting faculty) to ensure that they meet our university standards.”
Paul Eiss, an associate professor of history and one of the signatories of the letter, said the mischaracterization and misapplication of academic freedom “threw fuel on the fire” and was part of the reason many faculty signed the open letter.
“When you fundamentally mischaracterize that freedom, you weaken that freedom,” Eiss said.
He stated that academic freedom has three main applications: teaching, having the freedom to publish and research without reprisal, and inviting speakers. He emphasized that appointments do not fall under any of these categories.
“It is a profound misuse of the term to use it, in effect, to say ‘you can’t question this, you can’t look at it.’ Not only are you misusing academic freedom for the purpose of preventing transparency, which is exactly what it’s not supposed to be used for, but in the process, you introduce a great deal of confusion into the campus community about what academic freedom is,” said Eiss.
Later, a separate open letter was published with 11 signatories, of whom only two are tenured faculty, titled “Defending Academic Freedom and Intellectual Diversity at CMU”, which lauded the administration’s decision to allow Grenell to stay.
The letter reads, “Those demanding the appointment be rescinded are trying to redefine the meaning of ‘academic freedom’ to curtail this right, an action which would be extremely detrimental to the university. Furthermore, rescinding this appointment would create a chilling environment with respect to differences of opinion.”
Professor David Touretzky, a research professor of computer science and one of the co-authors of the letter supporting the administration’s decision, elaborated that the appointments should be the responsibility of the person in charge of hiring, rather than it being a group decision.
Touretzky told The Tartan, “if it’s a group decision, then you’re forced to the lowest common denominator, the least controversial people that everybody can agree on. What you really want is for someone to be interesting enough that at least one person whose judgement you respect thinks they’re worth having on campus.”
In response to the criticism that Grenell’s opponents have raised of his record, Touretzky found it to be “irrelevant” in the discussion about what Grenell could contribute to the campus discourse since they involve “political and professional decisions” made by Grenell.
He further adds that “the real dishonesty” is coming from Grenell’s opponents. He cites a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that included a tweet from Jeff Bigham, an associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. The tweet states that “people who propped up Trump, helped to execute his agenda, should not be welcome to CMU.”
“That’s what this is about,” he said. “Anyone who remains a Trump supporter should not be welcome on the CMU campus. That is what is really motivating them.”
Touretzky added, “it’s the job of the adults to run the institution. Students don’t get to throw people off campus because they lose a popularity vote.”
However, in wake of the controversy, Skinner reaffirmed her “serious commitment to the students in IPS,” which included starting a student advisory committee so the department can “include their perspectives and ideas.”
The IPS department also held a virtual town hall on July 10 to directly communicate her decision with students. In the town hall, Skinner gave a timeline for Grenell’s hiring process. She discussed how Grenell had called her sometime after Carnegie Mellon’s hiring freeze to discuss a new book he was working on, as well as a project on the decriminalization of homosexuality. There was no search for a senior fellow position at the time.
Skinner told students that she hired Grenell with a pot of money she received from donors to the department that was not affiliated with the university’s funds. She used this same money to invite past speakers such as Laura Chinchilla, the former president of Costa Rica, as well as Howard Dean.
Mark Dempsey, a Class of 2020 alumni who attended the virtual IPS town hall, still felt skeptical about the hiring. Dempsey told The Tartan that “a charitable reading of Grenell’s hiring was that it is hubris and an uncharitable reading of it would be that it’s corrupt.”
Later statements from President Jahanian, as well as the committee review report on Grenell’s hiring, confirmed Skinner’s statements about the funding sources and showed that Skinner had followed the proper protocol to get approval for the hiring process. In addition, she had received approval from Deans Schienes, Hebert, and Sanders, as well as Provost Garrett.
In the midst of the debate over Grenell’s hiring, student activists have felt that their concerns about Grenell’s record have been misrepresented, and that the conversation had become too centered around the debate of academic freedom and partisan politics.
Liam O’Connell, a junior in IPS, said that “people’s concerns are about Grenell’s record and reputation, not his ideology. I don’t think there has been much of a conversation about the issues that have been brought up.”
O’Connell hoped that the conversation over the hiring could shift away from “liberals versus conservatives.” He stated that debate and “diversity of opinion” are good, but if the debate is “lies and misinformation, then I don’t see how it’s useful.”
“I don’t see how any academic institution, let alone one that talks about our prestige, would benefit.”
He also added that Grenell is a “US government alum whose focus is national security”, which is “not a new perspective that is being brought into IPS.”
Catherine Taipe, a junior in IPS and one of the co-authors of the student-led petition, told The Tartan that “this is not an issue of whether or not he’s affiliated with the Trump administration or even being in far-right groups. It’s that he got so many complaints about his performance and wasn’t found to be competent at his job.”
She added that “his Twitter account promotes harmful rhetoric, which is far different than having an opposing view.”
Taipe also expressed her disappointment with the university’s mischaracterization of diversity, stating that “I don’t care about his identity or his background, but rather that he is a corrupt person.”
“The co-opting of the term ‘diversity’ to mean the embracing of racist and dangerous rhetoric in institutions of higher education is the most shameless, disgusting phenomenon that has come out of 21st-century performative and corporate wokeness. The goal of diversity, equity and inclusion is to uplift and empower the most marginalized voices –– and the way our university has twisted this goal in its favor is telling of its true values,” Taipe told The Tartan.
Taipe’s disappointment ventured beyond the university’s response to Mr Grenell’s hiring.
“Carnegie Mellon University so badly wants to exist in this moral gray area for the sake of ‘diversity of thought’ that it ignores the active harm it is doing to its community members. This appointment is a slap in the face as a woman of color, as an IPS student, as a person who genuinely cares about the wellbeing of my classmates who are equally as disappointed,” Taipe said.
As the semester begins, Grenell has continued to cause controversy among the student body. His tweet supporting anti-mask rhetoric was made on Aug. 20, the same day the committee report overseeing his hiring was made available by President Jahanian.
That committee report states that Grenell will be expected to follow university policies and that it will “be incumbent on Prof. Skinner to make sure he understands this requirement and holds him accountable.”
However, Taipe sees the university’s promise of accountability differently. “CMU has a lot of platitudes about creating a diverse, enriching, and equitable environment, but the actions they take don’t show it.... I just don’t really trust CMU’s promise on keeping Grenell accountable.”
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https://www.dw.com/en/us-ambassador-to-germany-richard-grenell-resigns/a-53659927
[rumors weeks]...United State's ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, resigned from his post after just over two years on the job, an embassy spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.
"Ambassador Grenell resigned from his post and the State Department on June 1," the spokesperson said.
Robin Quinville, deputy chief of mission at the embassy, will take over as Charge d'Affaires until a new ambassador is confirmed.
Grenell announced his resignation from the US State Department in a post on Instagram with US President Donald Trump giving him "a Cabinet chair" as a goodbye present.
Read more:Trump taps US envoy to Germany as top intelligence adviser
The announcement follows weeks of speculation that Grenell would give up his diplomatic post. In February, Trump named Grenell as the acting director of national intelligence, replacing incumbent Joseph Maguire.
Combative diplomat
In his short tenure as ambassador, Grenell became infamous for his combative, critical and, at times, non-cooperative diplomatic style.
Fiercely loyal to Trump, Grenell spent his time as ambassador actively advocating for the president's "America First" foreign policy vision.
Grenell frequently echoed the president's repeated criticism of Germany's defense spending as well as Germany's involvement in the NordStream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia, the Iran nuclear deal and the possible use of Huawei technology in Germany's new 5G network.
rs/rc (dpa, Reuters]
Is US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell set to step down?
The US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, is rumored to be leaving Berlin after two years on the job. A staunch Trump ally, Grenell made very few friends in the political establishment. (24.05.2020)
==
920 grab the fed
Most Popular
Donald Trump speaks at a September 2020 rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania . Christopher Bedford.
NEARLY 10 MILES OF CARS LINE UP FOR TRUMP — AND A RAUCOUS NIGHT IN SMALL TOWN AMERICA
The county paper predicted a crowd of 2,000-plus for Pr
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RIC GRENELL GOES TO TOWN ON IDIOT REPORTERS: MAYBE YOU’RE TOO YOUNG OR DUMB TO INTELLIGENTLY DISCUSS ACTUAL ISSUES
Former Acting Director of the National Intelligence Ric
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TRUMP-HATER JOHN BOLTON DEBUNKS ANONYMOUS ATLANTIC HIT PIECE ON TRUMP’S VETERANS RECORDFired former National Security Advisor John Bolton debu
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gay-gaslighter-rick-grenells-dishonest-attack-on-joe-biden-and-absurd-claim-about-pro-gay-trump/
richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. The Log Cabin Republicans recently promoted a video with Grenell attacking Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s record andclaiming that Donald Trump is “the most pro-gay president in American history”—an “absurd claim” that earned four Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s fact-checker.
In a nice bit of timing, Grenell’s video appeared at about the same time the U.S. Agency for International Development was caught purging references to LGBTQ people from a policy on gender equality and women’s empowerment, the latest in a long list of Trump administration moves to reverse Obama-era policies protecting the rights of LGBTQ people.
In the video, Grenell cites decades-old statements by Biden to portray him as hostile to equality—when in fact, Biden played a crucial role in advancing support for marriage equality within the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.
“President Trump has done more to advance the rights of gays and lesbians in three years than Joe Biden did in 40 plus years in Washington,” Grenell says, offering almost no evidence beyond his own appointment to high-level positions.
Grenell does tout one of the projects he undertook as ambassador. “President Trump began a historic campaign to decriminalize homosexuality around the world,” Grenell claimed. In reality, Grenell himself announced that “campaign” in February 2019, and a day after he announced it, Trump appeared not to have even heard about it.
“Also unclear was whether the decriminalization effort was, in fact, new,” the New York Times reported at the time. “A State Department spokesman in Washington, Robert Palladino, queried after the NBC report on the effort was broadcast, said: ‘This really is not a big policy departure. This is longstanding and it’s bipartisan.’”
Grenell did host some activist gatherings in Germany and a December 2019 event at the United Nations, and Trump did include a line about decriminalization in a United Nations speech. But the thrust of administration’s foreign policy initiatives has been headed strongly in the opposite direction of protecting or promoting LGBTQ equality.
In February 2020, when Grenell took his job as acting director of national intelligence, NBC suggested that the campaign had little to show for it, and the Human Rights Campaign said it had seen “no meaningful efforts by this administration to decriminalize homosexuality around the world.”HRC spokesperson Charlotte Clymer called it “another case of the Trump-Pence White House making promises to LGBTQ people, even while they enable discrimination and violence against us at home and abroad.” The Council for Global Equality’s Julie Dorf calls the campaign a “sham.”
But in his Log Cabin video, Grenell asks, “Why did Biden fail to make this a priority in his more than 40 years in Washington?”
The question itself is a breathtakingly dishonest insinuation. In fact, the Obama-Biden administration elevated the protection of LGBTQ human rights, making it an unprecedented priority in U.S. foreign policy, something that so outraged religious-right leaders that they embraced Russia’s anti-gay and anti-democratic strongman Vladimir Putin as the savior of Western civilization. Religious-right leaders were thrilled that the election of Trump would mean an end to LGBTQ equality playing a major role in U.S. foreign policy.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spent last year fomenting backlash to Obama-era policies and United Nations initiatives in favor of mobilizing a new “pro-family” coalition of nations and arguing for the supremacy of “traditional” religious and cultural views. The administration has embraced anti-equality regimes in Brazil, Hungary, and Poland.
In parallel, Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights created a platform for conservative academics to provide justification for his desire to resist human rights “inflation” and elevate religious liberty above other human rights commitments.
And Pompeo has opened doors in other countries so that anti-LGBTQ Bible study leader Ralph Drollinger could recruit high-level officials to join his “ministry,” which teaches that the Bible requires public officials to support right-wing policies on sexuality and family as well as economic, environmental, and criminal justice issues.
In his video, Grenell disingenuously suggests that the Trump administration’s foreign policy toward Iran had something to do with that regime’s hostility toward gay people. It’s not the first time that anti-Muslim sentiment has been used by right-wing politicians to gain gay support. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Milo Yiannopoulos and anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller hosted a “Gays for Trump” party whose featured speaker was a Dutch politician who said Islam has “no place in a free society.”
The misleading video ends with Grenell saying, “Gay people don’t have to vote Democrat,” a sign thatTurning Point USA’s Benny Johnson may be behind the video. Johnson’s video for Democrat-bashing congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik, aso an RNC speaker, ended with, “Black people don’t have to vote Democrat.”
Tags: Benny Johnson Donald TrumpMike PompeoRichard Grenell Anti-GayAnti-LGBTAnti-LGBTQElection 2020InternationalLog Cabin RepublicansTurning Point USA
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820 repost re obamagate (// ron j disinfo]
==
https://www.mediamatters.org/trumprussia/richard-grenells-flynn-unmasking-noninformation-campaign
Right-wing media froth over “Obamagate” and bully press to play along
WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ
PUBLISHED 05/15/20
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a former Fox News contributor and Republican Party stalwart who was appointed to lead the U.S. intelligence community because of his loyalty to President Donald Trump,provided a document of his own devising to Congress on Wednesday. It promptly leaked to the press. Republicans, including Trump himself, immediately seized on the content in the document as evidence of vast Obama administration malfeasance.
Fox hosts spent the next two days incessantly declaring that it vindicated their conspiracy theories, turning their attention away from the coronavirus pandemic. And more credible media outlets, buffeted by the partisan claims, responded with a flurry of stories, at times failing to properly contextualize the story.
Trumpists have declared Grenell’s document a smoking gun showing that disgraced former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was a victim of an Obama administration conspiracy, and Fox is hyping that narrative with wall-to-wall coverage. In reality, the document provides almost no information whatsoever. It is simply a list of senior Obama administration officials who received Flynn’s name after they followed the National Security Agency’s standard process and asked the agency to unmask the identity of an individual generically referenced in an NSA report they were authorized to read. It does nothing to establish that any of the individuals named acted improperly in any way -- or even how many unmaskings were related to the Kislyak calls.
We’ve seen misinformation campaigns, where false or deceptive information is distributed, and disinformation campaigns, when that distribution is done with the full knowledge of its inaccuracy.Grenell is engaged in a noninformation campaign.He deliberately crafted and propagated a data point so vague that it is virtually meaningless on its own.But pro-Trump partisans -- particularly at Fox -- have easily picked up, misread (deliberately or not), and promoted the point, aligining it with their wild assumptions [// Qanon]. Those furious misinterpretations have in turn spurred attention from the mainstream press, driving the conspiratorial thinking into the broader public.
This is an intentional plan that corresponds with what the president wants from his director of national intelligence. “Trump hopes enough information will be released by his intelligence appointees to muddy the waters and lend a patina of confusion about what Mr. Obama may have done, according to people familiar with his thinking,” The New York Times reported Thursday.As the president struggles in reelection polling, Trump and his Fox propagandists are using the Flynn story to try to damage the credibility of former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s 2020 opponent.
Grenell’s noninformation campaign is the latest salvo in a years-long campaign by Trump and his Fox propagandists to turn the Russia investigation inside out, presenting the Trump associates who pleaded or were found guilty under its auspices as victims and those involved in carrying out the probe as criminals.
With vast swathes of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of partisans selected for their loyalty to the president, including the DNI and Justice Department, we should expect more of these releases -- and perhaps more dangerous actions -- in the coming months, as Trump’s supporters try to push the political debate away from the ongoing pandemic that has killed more than 80,000 Americans so far in order to secure his reelection.
The Trumpist defense of Michael Flynn
Michael Flynn is a retired general who served as Trump’s national security adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, the transition, and the early days of his White House tenure. At various points during that timeline, Flynn was also assigned by Trump to find the Hillary Clinton emails he had publicly asked Russia to procure; was under investigation by the FBI, which was concerned with whether he was serving as a witting or unwitting agent of the Russian government; was illegally acting as an unregistered agent of the Turkish government, for which he was reportedly involved in discussions of a kidnapping plot; and was seeking Trump’s approval for a plan to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after working as a paid adviser for the group behind the proposal.
On December 29, 2016, the day the Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia in response to its interference in the presidential election, Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and urged him that Russia not retaliate for those sanctions. Flynn was fired as Trump’s national security adviser after reports surfaced that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations, which opened Flynn up to blackmail from the Russian government. He would later repeatedly plead guilty as part of Mueller’s probe to lying to the FBI about those calls before renouncing that plea last year.
The position on Flynn among Trumpists like Fox host Sean Hannity is that he is an American hero, [started w/ ollie?]that there was no good-faith reason to probe any of his actions during that period, and that anyone involved in such an effort was a participant in the broad-ranging Obama administration conspiracy to take down Trump, which the president terms “OBAMAGATE.” [RECALL EACH TIME HE WRIGGLES OUT OF A LEGIT CHARGE, HE DECLARES HIS RIGHEOUSNESS/VICTIMHOOD, ASCRIBING EACH TO INCREASING DESPERATION BY DEMS, THEY TRIED TO IMPEACH ME ON DAY 1...]
Their argument features Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak in two ways: They argue that the FBI’s interview with Flynn was a nefarious “setup” and suggest that the leak about the conversation from a “senior government official” to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius for his 2017 column, which brought the call into public light, was anillegal attempt to take down Flynn and Trump by someone who had improperly “unmasked” his identity from intelligence intercepts.
William Barr’s Justice Department showed last week that the Trump administration is putting the force of the federal government behind Fox’s conspiracy theories when it filed a dubious and virtually unprecedented motion seeking to drop the government’s case against Flynn,[THIS SORT OF SUCCEEDED 7/20, STILL BEING FOUGHT IN CT?] citing the FBI’s interview tactics. And on Wednesday, Grenell tried to use his own power as the director of national intelligence to provide grist in support of the other fork of the Flynn defense.
“Unmasking” and what Grenell’s document shows
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Grenell had declassified [VS POMPEO IG REPORT IS CLASSIFIED?!]and provided to the Justice Department what the paper described as “an Obama-era document related to President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn” and “a list of Obama administration officials who sought to learn the identities of Trump associates swept up in surveillance of foreign officials.” Later that day, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson sent a letter to Grenell and Barr asking for the document. Grenell provided it to the senators on Wednesday, and it was immediately leaked to CBS News’ Catherine Herridge, a former Fox reporter whose work often promotes Republican talking points. Herridge then published the letter on Twitter. (The document did not turn out to be precisely what the Times had reported. It had been generated on May 4, not during the “Obama era,” and dealt solely with cases involving Flynn, not “Trump associates” more generally.)
In NSA reports derived from the legal surveillance [FISA FBI SCREWUP LATER FOUND?] of foreign targets, analysts anonymize (“mask”) the names of U.S. persons to protect their privacy. It is routine for senior officials to ask the NSA to reveal (“unmask”) those identities in cases where they believe that information is necessary to understand the intelligence. The NSA has a standard procedure for doing this, including a review of the justification of the person seeking the unmasking. For context, Trump administration officials sought and received the unmasking of U.S. persons from the NSA more than 10,000 times in 2019 and nearly 17,000 times in 2018.
The document is a list created at Grenell’s request of several dozen “officials who submitted requests” to the NSA between Trump’s election and the end of January 2017 to unmask an identity which turned out to be Flynn, as detailed in an attached memorandum to Grenell from NSA Director Paul Nakasone. It provides the names of the officials, which include then-Vice President Biden, Cabinet secretaries, and intelligence agency leaders, and the date on which their requests were processed. It is the second version of the document -- as Nakasone detailed, the list was originally provided in alphabetical order but revised to be chronological.
That’s it.
Contrary to the insinuations from the right-wing figures, the document provides no evidence that any single unmasking was related to Flynn’s calls with Kislyak. In fact, the record suggests none of them were the original unmasking that first discovered Flynn had made the call, as that one was done by the FBI from its own intercept, not the NSA’s. Nor does it show that Flynn was in some way targeted -- by definition, unmasking occurs when senior administration officials don’t know the name of an American referenced in an intelligence report.
Indeed, there is no indication in the document that anyone listed behaved inappropriately -- in fact, it makes clear that the Obama-era unmaskings happened by the book. “Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request,” it states. It also points out that the NSA cannot confirm that any of the persons who requested the unmaskings eventually saw the information.
Grenell’s noninformation plot
Grenell is totally unqualified for his post. While previous occupants of his position ran intelligence agencies, he at most was a consumer of their products during a brief stint as U.S. ambassador to Germany. What he brings to the table instead, along with unswerving loyalty to the president, is broad experience in public relations and shaping news cycles, which he honed as a spokesperson for Republican politicians and for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, a strategic communications consultant for domestic and foreign clients, a Fox contributor, and a notably unhinged Twitter troll.
Grenell personally requested, sought revisions to, declassified, and provided the document to Congress in precisely this form, showing precisely what he wanted to become public.
If he wanted the document to include more information -- by for example, including the actual documents for which Flynn’s name was unmasked, or summaries thereof -- it would. Without that, despite the right-wing chorus linking Grenell’s document to Flynn’s Kislyak calls, it doesn’t provide evidence that any single unmasking had anything to do with them.In fact the majority of the unmaskings predate the calls and thus could not be related. Indeed, it doesn’t even indicate that Flynn was a participant in the intercepts used in the intelligence reports in which his name was unmasked, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage points out:
If Grenell had wanted the document to include less information -- by, for example, limiting the date range to after Flynn’s December 29 calls with Kislyak, which would reduce the list from 39 names to only eight -- it would.
What he produced is a very long list of names that maximized its impact, with no information whatsoever that any of them were involved in something the least bit inappropriate. That is, presumably, exactly what he wanted to do.
Perhaps Grenell has no evidence of wrongdoing, and few or none of the unmaskings reference the Kislyak calls (which is not implausible, as the FBI derived and distributed its own intercepts of the call with no masking as part of their already in-progress counterintelligence probe of Flynn). In that case, he’s declassified and released this information for a political purpose.
Perhaps he does have that evidence, but isn’t releasing it for now so he can continue to dribble documents out and generate more news stories as the presidential election approaches. In that case, he’s withholding that informationfor a political purpose.
Fox’s propagandists understand that their role in this noninformation campaign is to fill in the gaps left by the document with feverish, often fact-free speculation. Fox’sTucker Carlsondescribed Flynn’s unmasking as a “domestic spying operation” that was “hidden under the pretext of national security,” and that the Obama administration officials involved are “amoral creeps” who committed “felonies” and should be “punished.”
His prime-time colleague Hannity
by asking, “What did Barack Hussein Obama know and when did he know it?Tonight, we willunravel the biggest abuse of power scandal in American history.” He also attacked Biden for “lying” about the story and claimed on Wednesday that if the officials involved in Flynn’s unmasking don’t face “justice,” “the great American republic will disintegrate before your eyes.” Despite how little information the Grenell document provides, they are convinced that it vindicates their conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile, Fox personalities are attacking the mainstream press for not obsessing over the story,with Hannity arguing that this proves they are “Democratic shills.” On Friday, Trump himself picked up that angle, praising the Fox morning show for “covering, supremely, the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States, OBAMAGATE,” while pillorying CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as “Fake News” for failing to do so.
It’s no coincidence that Trump and Fox are trying to bully the mainstream press into giving the story more attention. They are counting on journalists to repeat the failures of the 2016 electionand flood the zone with context-free scandal coverage that dirties up the president’s opponent. That’s the play Trump is calling, and the leaders of the Justice Department and intelligence community are eagerly supporting the effort, and will likely continue dropping noninformation and disinformation until Election Day.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-is-on-the-verge-of-repeating-a-historic-disaster-by-pushing-the-wuhan-lab-hoax/
There’s a meme that appears now and then on Facebook and other social media: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”
That’s funny. What’s not is that the Trump administration and its coterie of China-bashers, led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and aided by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, have recently been dusting off the fake-intelligence playbook Vice President Dick Cheney used in 2002 and 2003 to justify war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At that time, the administration of President George W. Bush put enormous pressure on the U.S. intelligence community to ratify spurious allegations that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda and that his regime had assembled an arsenal of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Fantasy claims they may have been, but they did help to convince many skeptical conservatives and spooked liberals that a unilateral, illegal invasion of Iraq was urgently needed.
This time around, it’s the Trump administration’s reckless charge that Covid-19 — maybe manmade, maybe not, advocates of this conspiracy theory argue — was released perhaps deliberately, perhaps by accident from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the city that was the epicenter of the outbreak late last year. It’s a story that has ricocheted around the echo chambers of the far right, from conspiracy-oriented Internet kooks like
to semi-respectable media tribunes and radio talk-show hosts to the very highest reaches of the administration itself, including President Trump.
Unlike with Iraq in 2003, the U.S. isn’t planning on going to war with China, at least not yet. But the Trump administration’s zeal in shifting attention from its own bungling of the Covid-19 crisis to China’s alleged culpability in creating a global pandemic only raises tensions precipitously between the planet’s two great powers at a terrible moment. In the process, it essentially ensures that the two countries will be far less likely to cooperate in managing the long-term pandemic or collaboratively working on vaccines and cures. That makes it, as in 2002-2003, a matter of life and death.
Iraq Redux?
Back in 2002, the Bush administration launched an unending campaign of pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to falsify, distort, and cherry-pick intelligence factoids that could be collated into a package linking al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad. At the Pentagon, neoconservatives like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up an ad hoc team that eventually took on the name of Office of Special Plans. It was dedicated tofabricating intelligence on Iraq.
Just in case the message didn’t get across, Vice President Cheney made repeated visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to badger analysts to come up with something useful. In 2003, in “The Lie Factory,” which I co-authored with Jason Vest for Mother Jones, we reported on how Wolfowitz, Feith, allied Defense Department officials like Harold Rhode, and neoconservative apparatchiks like David Wurmser, then a senior adviser to Iraq-war-touting State Department Undersecretary John Bolton (and now an unofficial advisor to Donald Trump on Iran), actively worked to purge Pentagon and CIA officials who resisted the push to shape or exaggerate intelligence. A year later, veteran spy-watcher James Bamford described the whole episode in excruciating detail in his 2004 book, A Pretext for War.
In 2020, however, President Trump is not just pressuring the intelligence community, or IC. He’s at war with it and has been busy installing unprofessional know-nothings and sycophants in top positions there. His bitter antipathy began even before he was sworn into office, when he repeatedly refused to believe a sober analysis from the IC, including the CIA and FBI, that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had aided and abetted his election. Since then, he’s continually railed and tweeted against what he calls “the deep state.” And he’s assigned his authoritarian attorney general, Bill Barr, to conduct a scorched-earth offensive against the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI, and the Justice Department itself, most recently by dropping charges against admitted liar Michael Flynn, briefly Trump’s first national security advisor.
To make sure that the IC doesn’t challenge his wishes and does his bidding, Trump has moved to put his own political operatives in charge at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, created as part of an intelligence reorganization scheme after 9/11. The effort began in February when Trump named U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as acting DNI. A highly partisan, sharp-elbowed politico and spokesman for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, he harbors far-right views and is a Trump loyalist, as well as an acolyte of former Trump aide Steve Bannon. On arriving in Bonn as ambassador, Grenell soon endorsed the rise of Europe’s anti-establishment ultra-right in an interview with Bannon’s Breitbart News.
To bolster Grenell, the administration has called on another ultra-right crusader, Kash Patel. He has served as Republican Congressman Devin Nunes’s aide in the campaign to discredit the Russia investigation and reportedly acted as a White House backchannel to Ukraine during the effort to stir up an inquiry in Kiev aimed at tarring former Vice President Joe Biden.
Following that, the president re-named Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas, one of the president’s most enthusiastic defenders during the debate over impeachment, to serve as Grenell’s permanent replacement at ODNI. In 2019, Trump first floated Ratcliffe’s name for the post, but it was shot down days later, thanks to opposition from even Republican members of Congress, not to speak of intelligence professionals and various pundits. Now, he’s back, awaiting likely confirmation.
It remains to be seen whether the Grenell-Ratcliffe tag-team, combined with Trump’s three-year campaign to disparage the intelligence community and intimidate its functionaries, has softened them up enough for the administration’s push to finger China and its labs for creating and spreading Covid-19.
The Wuhan Lab Lies
As is often the case, that campaign began rather quietly and unobtrusively in conservative and right-wing media outlets.
On January 24th, the right-wing Washington Times ran a story entitled “Coronavirus may have originated in a lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.” It, in turn, was playing off of a piece that had appeared inLondon’sDaily Mailthe previous day. Written like a science-fiction thriller, that story drew nearly all its (unverified) information from a single source, an Israeli military intelligence China specialist. Soon, it moved from the Washington Times to other American right-wing outlets. Steve Bannon picked it up the next day on his podcast, “War Room: Pandemic,” calling the piece “amazing.” A few days later, the unreliable, gossipy website ZeroHedge ran a (later much-debunked) piece saying that a Chinese scientist bioengineered the virus, purporting even to name the scientist.
A couple of weeks later, Fox News weighed in, laughably citing a Dean Koontz novel, The Eyes of Darkness, about “a Chinese military lab that creates a new virus to potentially use as a biological weapon during wartime.” The day after that, Senator Tom Cotton — appearing on Fox, of course — agreed that China might indeed have created the virus.Then the idea began to go… well, viral. (Soon Cotton was even tweeting that Beijing might possibly have deliberately released the virus.) By late February, the right’s loudest voice, Rush Limbaugh, was on the case, claiming that the virus “is probably a ChiCom laboratory experiment that is in the process of being weaponized.” (A vivid account of how this conspiracy theory spread can be found at the Global Disinformation Index.)
Starting in March, even as they were dismissing the seriousness of Covid-19, both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeatedly insisted on referring to it as the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus,” ignoring criticism that terminology like that was both racist and inflammatory. In late March, Pompeo even managed to scuttle a communiqué from America’s allies in the Group of Seven, or G7, by demanding that they agree to use the term “Wuhan virus.” It didn’t take the president long to start threatening retaliatory action against China for its alleged role in spreading Covid-19, whilehe began comparing the pandemic to the 1941 Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
And all of that was but a prelude to the White House ramping up of pressure on the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community to prove that the virus had indeed emerged, whether by design or accident, from either the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, a branch of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An April 30th article in the New York Times broke the story that administration officials “have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak,” and that Grenell had made it a “priority.”
Both Trump and Pompeo would, in the meantime, repeatedly assert that they had seen actual “evidence” that the virus had indeed come from a Chinese lab, though Trump pretended that the information was so secret he couldn’t say anything more about it. “I can’t tell you that,” he said. “I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Asked during an appearance on ABC’s This Week if the virus had popped out of a lab in Wuhan, Pompeo answered: “There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began.”
On April 30th, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a terse statement,saying that so far it had concluded Covid-19 is “not manmade or genetically modified,” but that they were looking into whether or not it was “the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” There is, however, no evidence of such an accident, nor did the ODNI cite any.
A Finger on the Scale
The run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003 should be on all our minds today. Then, top officials simply repeated again and again that they believed both Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent ties to al-Qaeda and his nonexistent active nuclear, chemical, andbioweapon programs were realities and assigned intelligence community collectors and analysts to look into them (while paying no attention to their conclusions). Now, Trump and his people are similarly putting their fat fingers on the scale of reality, while making it clear to hopefully intimidated intelligence professionals just what conclusions they want to hear.
Because those professionals know that their careers, salaries, and pensions depend on the continued favor of the politicians who pay them, there is, of course, a tremendous incentive to go along with such demands, shade what IC officials call the “estimate” in the direction the White House wants, or at least keep their mouths shut. That is exactly what happened in 2002 and, given that Grenell, Patel, and Ratcliffe are essentially Trump toadies, the IC officials lower on the totem pole have to be grimly aware of what their latest bosses expect from them.
There was near-instant pushback from scientists, intelligence officials, and China experts about the Trump-Pompeo campaign to finger the Wuhan lab. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the preeminent American scientist and Covid-19 expert, promptly shot it down, saying that the virus had “evolved in nature and then jumped species.” That’s because actual scientists, who study the genome of the virus and its mutations, unanimously agree that it was not generated in a lab.
Among America’s allies — Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand — in what’s called the Five Eyes group, there was an unambiguous conclusion that the virus had been a “naturally occurring” one and had mutated in the course of “human and animal interaction.” Australia, in particular, rejected what appeared to be a fake-intelligence dossier about the Wuhan lab, while German officials in an internal document ridiculed the lab rumors as “a calculated attempt to distract” attention from the Trump administration’s own inept handling of the virus.
Finally, according to Bloomberg News, those studying the issue inside the intelligence community now say that suspicions it emerged from a lab are “largely circumstantial since the U.S. has very little information from the ground to back up the lab-escape theory or any other.” In the end, however, that doesn’t mean top IC officials beholden to the White House won’t tailor their conclusions to fit the Trump-Pompeo narrative.
John McLaughlin, who served as deputy director and then acting director of the CIA during the Bush administration, believes that we are indeed seeing a replay of what happened in Iraq nearly two decades ago. “What it reminds me of is the dispute between the CIA and parts of the Bush administration over whether there was an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda,” he said. “They kept asking the CIA, and we kept coming back and saying, ‘You know, it’s just not there.’”
Whether the tug-of-war between Trump, Pompeo, and the IC is just another passing battle in a more than three-year-old war between the president and the “Deep State” or whether it’s something that could lead to a serious crisis between Washington and Beijing remains to be seen. Ironically enough, in January and February of this year, the IC provided President Trump with more than a dozen clear warnings about the dangers to the United States and national security posed by the coronavirus, following clarion calls from China and the World Health Organization that what was happening in Wuhan could spread worldwide — warnings that Trump either failed to notice, disregarded, or downplayed through March.
Were Donald Trump not so predisposed to see the intelligence community as his enemy, he might have paid more attention back then. Had he done so, there would undoubtedly be many less dead Americans right now and he wouldn’t have had to spend his time in his own lab concocting what might be thought of as batshit excuses for his dereliction of duty.
By the time this affair is over, the invasion of Iraq could look like the good old days.
Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist and TomDispatch regular, is a contributing editor at the Nation and has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/trumprussia/richard-grenells-flynn-unmasking-noninformation-campaign
Right-wing media froth over “Obamagate” and bully press to play along
WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ
PUBLISHED 05/15/20 2:15 PM EDT
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a former Fox News contributor and Republican Party stalwart who was appointed to lead the U.S. intelligence community because of his loyalty to President Donald Trump, provided a document of his own devising to Congress on Wednesday. It promptly leaked to the press. Republicans, including Trump himself, immediately seized on the content in the document as evidence of vast Obama administration malfeasance. Fox hosts spent the next two days incessantly declaring that it vindicated their conspiracy theories, turning their attention away from the coronavirus pandemic. And more credible media outlets, buffeted by the partisan claims, responded with a flurry of stories, at times failing to properly contextualize the story.
Trumpists have declared Grenell’s document a smoking gun showing that disgraced former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was a victim of an Obama administration conspiracy, and Fox is hyping that narrative with wall-to-wall coverage. In reality, the document provides almost no information whatsoever. It is simply a list of senior Obama administration officials who received Flynn’s name after they followed the National Security Agency’s standard process and asked the agency to unmask the identity of an individual generically referenced in an NSA report they were authorized to read. It does nothing to establish that any of the individuals named acted improperly in any way -- or even how many unmaskings were related to the Kislyak calls.
We’ve seen misinformation campaigns, where false or deceptive information is distributed, and disinformation campaigns, when that distribution is done with the full knowledge of its inaccuracy. Grenell is engaged in a noninformation campaign. He deliberately crafted and propagated a data point so vague that it is virtually meaningless on its own. But pro-Trump partisans -- particularly at Fox -- have easily picked up, misread (deliberately or not), and promoted the point, aligining it with their wild assumptions. Those furious misinterpretations have in turn spurred attention from the mainstream press, driving the conspiratorial thinking into the broader public.
This is an intentional plan that corresponds with what the president wants from his director of national intelligence. “Trump hopes enough information will be released by his intelligence appointees to muddy the waters and lend a patina of confusion about what Mr. Obama may have done, according to people familiar with his thinking,” The New York Times reported Thursday. As the president struggles in reelection polling, Trump and his Fox propagandists are using the Flynn story to try to damage the credibility of former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s 2020 opponent.
Grenell’s noninformation campaign is the latest salvo in a years-long campaign by Trump and his Fox propagandists to turn the Russia investigation inside out, presenting the Trump associates who pleaded or were found guilty under its auspices as victims and those involved in carrying out the probe as criminals.
With vast swathes of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of partisans selected for their loyalty to the president, including the DNI and Justice Department, we should expect more of these releases -- and perhaps more dangerous actions -- in the coming months, as Trump’s supporters try to push the political debate away from the ongoing pandemic that has killed more than 80,000 Americans so far in order to secure his reelection.
The Trumpist defense of Michael Flynn
Michael Flynn is a retired general who served as Trump’s national security adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, the transition, and the early days of his White House tenure. At various points during that timeline, Flynn was also assigned by Trump to find the Hillary Clinton emails he had publicly asked Russia to procure; was under investigation by the FBI, which was concerned with whether he was serving as a witting or unwitting agent of the Russian government; was illegally acting as an unregistered agent of the Turkish government, for which he was reportedly involved in discussions of a kidnapping plot; and was seeking Trump’s approval for a plan to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after working as a paid adviser for the group behind the proposal.
On December 29, 2016, the day the Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia in response to its interference in the presidential election, Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and urged him that Russia not retaliate for those sanctions. Flynn was fired as Trump’s national security adviser after reports surfaced that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations, which opened Flynn up to blackmail from the Russian government. He would later repeatedly plead guilty as part of Mueller’s probe to lying to the FBI about those calls before renouncing that plea last year.
The position on Flynn among Trumpists like Fox host Sean Hannity is that he is an American hero, that there was no good-faith reason to probe any of his actions during that period, and that anyone involved in such an effort was a participant in the broad-ranging Obama administration conspiracy to take down Trump, which the president terms “OBAMAGATE.”
Their argument features Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak in two ways: They argue that the FBI’s interview with Flynn was a nefarious “setup” and suggest that the leak about the conversation from a “senior government official” to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius for his 2017 column, which brought the call into public light, was an illegal attempt to take down Flynn and Trump by someone who had improperly “unmasked” his identity from intelligence intercepts.
William Barr’s Justice Department showed last week that the Trump administration is putting the force of the federal government behind Fox’s conspiracy theories when it filed a dubious and virtually unprecedented motion seeking to drop the government’s case against Flynn, citing the FBI’s interview tactics. And on Wednesday, Grenell tried to use his own power as the director of national intelligence to provide grist in support of the other fork of the Flynn defense.
“Unmasking” and what Grenell’s document shows
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Grenell had declassified and provided to the Justice Department what the paper described as “an Obama-era document related to President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn” and “a list of Obama administration officials who sought to learn the identities of Trump associates swept up in surveillance of foreign officials.” Later that day, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson sent a letter to Grenell and Barr asking for the document. Grenell provided it to the senators on Wednesday, and it was immediately leaked to CBS News’ Catherine Herridge, a former Fox reporter whose work often promotes Republican talking points. Herridge then published the letter on Twitter. (The document did not turn out to be precisely what the Times had reported. It had been generated on May 4, not during the “Obama era,” and dealt solely with cases involving Flynn, not “Trump associates” more generally.)
In NSA reports derived from the legal surveillance of foreign targets, analysts anonymize (“mask”) the names of U.S. persons to protect their privacy. It is routine for senior officials to ask the NSA to reveal (“unmask”) those identities in cases where they believe that information is necessary to understand the intelligence. The NSA has a standard procedure for doing this, including a review of the justification of the person seeking the unmasking. For context, Trump administration officials sought and received the unmasking of U.S. persons from the NSA more than 10,000 times in 2019 and nearly 17,000 times in 2018.
The document is a list created at Grenell’s request of several dozen “officials who submitted requests” to the NSA between Trump’s election and the end of January 2017 to unmask an identity which turned out to be Flynn, as detailed in an attached memorandum to Grenell from NSA Director Paul Nakasone. It provides the names of the officials, which include then-Vice President Biden, Cabinet secretaries, and intelligence agency leaders, and the date on which their requests were processed. It is the second version of the document -- as Nakasone detailed, the list was originally provided in alphabetical order but revised to be chronological.
That’s it.
Contrary to the insinuations from the right-wing figures, the document provides no evidence that any single unmasking was related to Flynn’s calls with Kislyak. In fact, the record suggests none of them were the original unmasking that first discovered Flynn had made the call, as that one was done by the FBI from its own intercept, not the NSA’s. Nor does it show that Flynn was in some way targeted -- by definition, unmasking occurs when senior administration officials don’t know the name of an American referenced in an intelligence report.
Indeed, there is no indication in the document that anyone listed behaved inappropriately -- in fact, it makes clear that the Obama-era unmaskings happened by the book. “Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request,” it states. It also points out that the NSA cannot confirm that any of the persons who requested the unmaskings eventually saw the information.
Grenell’s noninformation plot
Grenell is totally unqualified for his post. While previous occupants of his position ran intelligence agencies, he at most was a consumer of their products during a brief stint as U.S. ambassador to Germany. What he brings to the table instead, along with unswerving loyalty to the president, is broad experience in public relations and shaping news cycles, which he honed as a spokesperson for Republican politicians and for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, a strategic communications consultant for domestic and foreign clients, a Fox contributor, and a notably unhinged Twitter troll.
Grenell personally requested, sought revisions to, declassified, and provided the document to Congress in precisely this form, showing precisely what he wanted to become public.
If he wanted the document to include more information -- by for example, including the actual documents for which Flynn’s name was unmasked, or summaries thereof -- it would. Without that, despite the right-wing chorus linking Grenell’s document to Flynn’s Kislyak calls, it doesn’t provide evidence that any single unmasking had anything to do with them.In fact the majority of the unmaskings predate the calls and thus could not be related. Indeed, it doesn’t even indicate that Flynn was a participant in the intercepts used in the intelligence reports in which his name was unmasked, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage points out:
If Grenell had wanted the document to include less information -- by, for example, limiting the date range to after Flynn’s December 29 calls with Kislyak, which would reduce the list from 39 names to only eight -- it would.
What he produced is a very long list of names that maximized its impact, with no information whatsoever that any of them were involved in something the least bit inappropriate. That is, presumably, exactly what he wanted to do.
Perhaps Grenell has no evidence of wrongdoing, and few or none of the unmaskings reference the Kislyak calls (which is not implausible, as the FBI derived and distributed its own intercepts of the call with no masking as part of their already in-progress counterintelligence probe of Flynn). In that case, he’s declassified and released this information for a political purpose.
Perhaps he does have that evidence, but isn’t releasing it for now so he can continue to dribble documents out and generate more news stories as the presidential election approaches. In that case, he’s withholding that information for a political purpose.
Fox’s propagandists understand that their role in this noninformation campaign is to fill in the gaps left by the document with feverish, often fact-free speculation. Fox’s Tucker Carlson described Flynn’s unmasking as a “domestic spying operation” that was “hidden under the pretext of national security,” and that the Obama administration officials involved are “amoral creeps” who committed “felonies” and should be “punished.” His prime-time colleague Hannity
by asking, “What did Barack Hussein Obama know and when did he know it? Tonight, we will unravel the biggest abuse of power scandal in American history.” He also attacked Biden for “lying” about the story and claimed on Wednesday that if the officials involved in Flynn’s unmasking don’t face “justice,” “the great American republic will disintegrate before your eyes.” Despite how little information the Grenell document provides, they are convinced that it vindicates their conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile, Fox personalities are attacking the mainstream press for not obsessing over the story, with Hannity arguing that this proves they are “Democratic shills.” On Friday, Trump himself picked up that angle, praising the Fox morning show for “covering, supremely, the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States, OBAMAGATE,” while pillorying CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as “Fake News” for failing to do so.
It’s no coincidence that Trump and Fox are trying to bully the mainstream press into giving the story more attention. They are counting on journalists to repeat the failures of the 2016 electionand flood the zone with context-free scandal coverage that dirties up the president’s opponent. That’s the play Trump is calling, and the leaders of the Justice Department and intelligence community are eagerly supporting the effort, and will likely continue dropping noninformation and disinformation until Election Day.
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WHY GO AFTER MUELLER NOW?
520 wa mon?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/bill-barrs-twisted-plot-to-use-the-doj-as-a-political-weapon-is-just-beginning/
no lnx
Bill Barr’s twisted plot to use the DOJ as a political weapon is just beginning
Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly May 13, 2020
After the Trump administration stonewalled Congress on the release of any records or witnesses during the impeachment hearings, it is important to keep in mind that there is some material they are determined to make public.
Shortly after the attorney general assigned John Durham the task of investigating the Trump-Russia probe, the president announced that he had given Barr the authority to declassify any material pertaining to the investigation. That directive came the day before Trump accused FBI officials of treason and referred to Mueller’s investigators as “killers.”
Normally, it would be the director of national intelligence who would determine whether to release classified information. So before Barr could proceed, the administration needed to get rid of Dan Coates, who hadn’t demonstrated sufficient loyalty to Trump. With the president’s lackey, Richard Grenell, installed as acting DNI, the declassification process is now underway.
Last Thursday, Grenell released the transcripts of classified testimony before the House Intelligence Committee during their investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. That was the same day that the Department of Justice announced that they were dropping the charges against Michael Flynn. Thursday was a busy day. It is also when Grenell delivered a “satchel” of documents to Barr at the Department of Justice. ABC News is now reporting that they contain the names of “former Obama administration officials who were allegedly involved in the so-called ‘unmasking’ of former national security adviser Michael Flynn in his conversations with the former Russian ambassador during the presidential transition.” According to Fox News, Barr plans to release the names as early as Tuesday.
What we can expect from this news is a renewal of the attacks on Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice. If you remember, back in March of 2017, shortly after Trump tweeted that the Obama administration had his “wires tapped at Trump Tower,” Devin Nunes went to the White House for a clandestine meeting after which, he held a press conference saying that he had seen intelligence reports that indicated Trump and his associates were included in electronic surveillance.
As it turned out, what he had seen were reports on electronic surveillance of foreign adversaries in which the names of Trump campaign staff had been “unmasked.” Soon all of the attention about that unmasking turned into attacks on Rice. But when the materials Nunes had seen at the White House were shared with members of the House Intelligence Committee, this is what CNN reported.
After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.
Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump’s allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the “unmasking” of US individuals’ identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a “massive story.”…
One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as “normal and appropriate” for officials who serve in that role to the president.
What is about to happen is the same thing I reported on Monday about what right-wing news outlets did with Rice’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Grenell and Barr are selectively leaking information (often with contradictory evidence redacted) that allows Trump’s enablers to cherry-pick statements to lie about the events surrounding the Russia probe and create what they’re calling the “Obamagate” narrative. These particular releases are a coordinated attempt to exonerate Michael Flynn and attack anyone who played a role in his prosecution.
If any of this sounds similar to what Barr did in the days before he released the Mueller report, it is probably because that is exactly what he is doing. He is twisting evidence to lay the groundwork for his coming actions with regard to the Durham investigation.
Back in May 2016, Benjamin Wittes warned us about all of this when he wrote about the fact that the least tyrant-proof part of the government is the Department of Justice. To demonstrate, he quoted Justice Robert Jackson.
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.
With an assist from Grenell, that is exactly the sword that Barr is wielding in an attempt to exonerate Trump and smear the previous administration. The attorney general is using the Department of Justice to create a hall of mirrors and, as Peter Wehner suggested, asking us to live within Trump’s lies.
Those who have worked for the Department of Justice under both Republican and Democratic presidents are sounding the alarm. For example, Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department wrote a piece for the New York Times titled, “Bill Barr Twisted My Words in Dropping the Flynn Case. Here’s the Truth.” Former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg shot down one of Barr’s lies by documenting “The long list of people who thought Flynn’s lies were material.” Jonathan Kravis, the federal prosecutor who resigned over Barr’s intervention in the sentencing of Roger Stone, wrote:
In both cases [Stone and Flynn], the department undercut the work of career employees to protect an ally of the president, an abdication of the commitment to equal justice under the law. Prosecutors must make decisions based on facts and law, not on the defendant’s political connections. When the department takes steps that it would never take in any other case to protect an ally of the president, it betrays this principle.
Indeed, the department chose to assign these matters to a special counsel precisely to avoid the appearance of political influence. For the attorney general now to directly intervene to benefit the president’s associates makes this betrayal of the rule of law even more egregious.
That betrayal of the rule of law is why over 2,000 Justice Department alumni (including our own Julie Zebrak) have signed a statement calling on Congress to hold Barr accountable.
My two cents on the matter would be that we are still in the early stages of how Barr and Grenell are planning to betray the rule of law. They’ll be dropping a bucket-load of twisted lies in the coming months.
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rww 420
Doug Mainwaring warns that Richard Grenell, the acting Director of National Intelligence, “is expanding his mandate from President Trump to eliminate the death penalty for and otherwise decriminalize being gay around the world to include the normalization of homosexuality in the vast array of spy agencies he oversees.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/new-signs-emerge-that-trumps-controversial-new-intel-chief-is-trying-to-keep-congress-in-the-dark
no lnx
New signs emerge that Trump’s controversial new intel chief is trying to keep Congress in the dark
Written by Cody Fenwick March 10, 2020
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell was expected to brief lawmakers about election interference on Tuesday, according to CNN, but his office announced at the last minute that he will not be showing up.
He would have joined other top national security officials to deliver the information to Congress. However, other “experts” were sent in his place. Grenell denied to CNN that he had ever intended to show up for the briefing, but the outlet reported that it obtained documents sent to multiple lawmakers’ offices indicating that he would be appearing on Tuesday.
The odd and unexplained turn of events followed a report from Time on Monday that found that the controversial appointee’s office is withholding or delaying a global threat assessment from Congress that “warns that the U.S. remains unprepared for a global pandemic,” citing two officials who have seen the documents.
Grenell has a lot to answer for, and he may be apprehensive about subjecting himself to questions from Congress. He has little background in intelligence work and had been serving as ambassador to Germany before President Donald Trump dropped him into the DNI role. From all appearances, Trump picked him for the position because he was seeking a loyalist; Grenell has previously drawn attention to himself by being a shameless pro-Trump partisan. After Trump picked Grenell to serve in an acting capacity, Trump nominated another loyalist, Rep. John Ratcliffe, whose nomination for the permanent position had previously been stalled when it was reported he had engaged in dubious resume padding. It now appears Trump is trying to force Congress to accept either Ratcliffe or Grenell — both entirely unsuited to the dispassionate position — so that he can politicize the intelligence community’s work in his favor.
The Time report leaves the impression that Trump’s attempt to politicize the intelligence community is already working. It’s not just the threat assessment’s findings about U.S. pandemic preparedness that Trump may prefer to keep hidden — he’s currently coming under fire for a botched response to the coronavirus outbreak. It also seems likely he would want to conceal parts of the assessment that could be seen as undermining key aspects of his foreign policy:
Other dangers flagged in the 2020 report, according to the two sources, include Iran’s return to nuclear enrichment, North Korea’s accelerated launching of missiles and the increasingly urgent national security risks posed by climate change.
…
Trump continues to deny or downplay Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. elections through propaganda and disinformation promulgated on bogus social media accounts. The threat assessment has warned for years that “Russia poses a cyber espionage, influence and attack threat to the United States and our allies.”
Trump touts his diplomatic efforts with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, but past intelligence assessments have been skeptical about their effectiveness. This year’s still-unpublished report echoes the 2019 assessments that North Korea “is unlikely to give up all its WMD stockpiles, delivery systems, and production capabilities” and that “North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival,” according to a former official who was involved in preparing this year’s report.
CNN also noted that Grenell’s appointment as acting DNI came after Trump was reportedly unhappy with the office’s communications to Congress about Russian election interference under DNI Joseph Maguire:
Tuesday’s briefings come almost three weeks after Grenell was controversially named to the top intel job, in the wake of an election security briefing by Pierson that angered Trump because she testified that Russia supports the President’s reelection bid.
In unprepared remarks, Pierson had told members of the House Intelligence Committee in a February 13 briefing that Russia is meddling in the 2020 campaign and intelligence indicated it had once again developed a preference for Trump (as well as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders).
However, a senior intelligence official denied that Pierson had told lawmakers that Russia was actively aiding Trump’s reelection effort.
Grenell replaced Adm. Joseph Maguire and pushed out his deputy, Andrew Hallman, a longtime CIA officer. An official from the National Security Council who had previously worked to discredit Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian activity, Kash Patel, was named an adviser to Grenell.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trumps-on-a-mission-to-corrupt-the-nations-intelligence-for-his-own-political-benefit
wa mo
no lnx
Trump’s on a mission to corrupt the nation’s intelligence for his own political benefit
Written by The Washington Monthly March 7, 2020
Flush with his impeachment acquittal victory, President Donald Trump has resurrected his nomination of Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe to become Director of National Intelligence. Ratcliffe’s initial nomination sank in July after it was revealed he had embellished his record as a U.S. Attorney by lying that he fought terrorism and rounded up hundreds of undocumented immigrants.
So, what motivates Trump to trot out the same damaged goods to head U.S. intelligence? This is, after all, a man whom former acting CIA director Mike Morell described as having “the least national security experience and the most partisan political experience of any previous director of national intelligence,” Even worse, Ratcliffe has peddled the conspiracy theory that “there may have been a secret society of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI” in 2016 who were working to prevent Trump from becoming president.
It’s not complicated. Trump prizes slavishness and intellectual dishonesty, or flat out derangement. All the qualities Ratcliffe seems to possess in abundance. Post-impeachment, Trump feels empowered to push the envelope even further than he already has to corrupt and subjugate the government apparatus to his own ends, with a key focus on the intelligence community.
Ratcliffe would succeed Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire, who was recently ousted as acting DNI by Trump after Maguire’s staff briefed the House Intelligence Committee on ongoing Russian election interference. To fill the gap, Trump has named one of his biggest loyalists, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, as acting DNI.
Grenell’s Trumpist antics as U.S. envoy have already made him a pariah in Berlin. But now, he has gotten the ball rolling in doing his master’s bidding and cleaning house: In just two weeks on the job, he has fired DNI principal executive and veteran CIA officer Andrew Hallman and hired Kash Patel as “senior advisor.” Patel is an NSC staffer and former Devon Nunes aide with little grounding in the intelligence community. Worse yet, Patel has already played a disgraced role in American history. He presented himself, falsely, as a Ukraine expert to the president and fed him disinformation that led to Trump’s impeachment-prompting attempt to extort Ukrainian president Zelensky. Grennell also dismissed chief of staff Viraj Mirani, continuing Trump’s purge of qualified and experienced IC officials.
Topping off Trump’s appointments of credentials-lite “yes-men,” is that of Michael Ellis, another Nunes acolyte, as the NSC’s director for intelligence. Ellis was behind the decision to bury the transcript of Trump’s infamous July 25, 2019 call to President Zelensky in a super-secret code word server. At the same time, Trump has imposed McCarthy-like loyalty-testing of federal employees through his hand-chosen grand inquisitor, 29-year-old John McEntee, the president’s former body man who was fired last year for a gambling addiction. Along with his deputy, a college student, McEntee is reportedly concentrating the hunt on allegedly anti-Trump political appointees. My contacts inside the government report the working level has not yet been targeted. “But our antennae are up,” said one national security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In other words, the president is turning paranoia into personnel policy. An expert in the politicization of intelligence, American University professor Joshua Rovner calls Trump’s moves “manipulation by appointment.” He told me in an interview that he worries that Ratcliffe “would perpetrate real damage to the intelligence community.”
Stephen Slick, a 27-year CIA senior operations officer who now heads the University of Texas at Austin’s intelligence studies program, told me Trump’s bid to coerce political loyalty from government agencies and civil servants that are charged with pursuing the truth puts the country in danger. “If the president succeeds in his project to diminish the fundamental non-partisan character of American intelligence and law enforcement, we will become increasingly vulnerable to miscalculation or catastrophic surprise,” he said.
Of course, we know the consequences of manipulated intelligence. George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, based on faulty intelligence, led the country into a chaotic war that destabilized the Middle East. Thus far, that overseas adventure has cost more than $2 trillion and almost 4,500 American service members’ lives. Roughly 32,000 soldiers have been wounded.
The Trump White House’s intimidation is already having a deleterious impact. Last month, agency chiefs declined to participate in briefing the House Intelligence Committee in the public segment of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment hearing, fearing that doing so would attract the president’s ire.
Trump’s constant attacks against the intelligence community fit into his wider war on truth itself. His mission is twofold: to shield the public from intelligence that potentially could damage him politically, and to control the flow of information emanating from the agencies. That Trump’s goals fit neatly with those of Vladimir Putin could be a mere coincidence, or perhaps something more insidious. Eventually, that truth will come out.
Meanwhile, the Vichy GOP acts as Trump’s enabler. Based on the past behavior of Republicans in Congress, it seems obvious that they won’t stand up to the president now, even with the nation’s national security on the line.
Having served for many years as a State Department diplomat, and as a Pentagon intelligence analyst, I am of the conviction that Trump knows full well what he is doing. He may, typically, not have a detailed plan, but his ultimate objective is clear. And the country will be the worse for it.
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pow
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/05/iran-coronavirus-medicine-sanctions/
DESPITE A MASSIVE coronavirus-related public health crisis, an anti-Iran pressure group with close ties to the Trump administration is urging major pharmaceutical companies to “end their Iran business,” focusing on companies with special licenses — most often under a broadly defined “humanitarian exemption” — to conduct trade with Iran.
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With a novel strain of coronavirus rapidly spreading around the world, Iran has been hit particularly hard, with 107 deaths and 3,515 infections recorded so far. Yet the pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran, is carrying on with its campaign targeting medical trade with Iran despite the Trump administration’sspecial financial channels for humanitarian goods and medicine to reach the beleaguered country.
“U.S. sanctions have had a long-term impact on Iran’s ability to freely import medical supplies,” said Tyler Cullis, an attorney specializing in sanctions law at Ferrari & Associates. He pointed to “outside groups” that seek to bolster the Treasury Department’s investigatory heft and provide information on companies doing trade with Iran. “In tandem with U.S. sanctions,” Cullis said, “these groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”
:{:{}:
“These groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”
}:
The medical and humanitarian trade are carved out of crippling sanctions against Iran through special licenses issued by the Treasury Department. But companies must apply for the licenses then carry out the trade — something United Against Nuclear Iran, known as UANI, seeks to discourage.
“Their efforts are not insignificant,” Cullis said. “It is, after all, not an altogether lucrative enterprise selling medical supplies to Iran, so the name-and-shame operations of outside groups have a significant impact on the cost-benefit analysis associated with doing business with Iran.”
Joshua Silberberg, a spokesperson for UANI, declined to respond to questions about the group’s effort to name and shame companies doing medical trade with Iran. “UANI has a long history of expressing support and solidarity with the Iranian people,” he said, pointing to a statement applauding the finalization of the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, an agreement arranged by the U.S. and Swiss governments.
UANI says it aims to persuade “the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons, while striving not to punish the Iranian people.” (The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that Iran has any desire or plans to build nuclear weapons.) UANI’s efforts, however, have extended beyond sanctions into pressuring companies that do legal trade with Iran, often under the Treasury Department’s humanitarian exemptions to sanctions — including medical-related trades that would presumably aid in combating a massive public health crisis like this coronavirus outbreak.
UANI operates an “Iran Business Registry” that provides an online database of companies it believes are conducting business in or with Iran — a name-and-shame strategy to increase Iran’s economic isolation. The pressure campaign has targeted multiple medical companies with Treasury Department licenses to conduct trade with Iran. Nine pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations, all with special licenses, are listed on UANI’s business registry. Companies urged by UANI to “end their Iran business” include Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, Genzyme, AirSep, Medrad, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories.
The legal channels for humanitarian trade are widely reported to be failing to provide a sufficient flow of medicine and other humanitarian goods.
UANI’S EFFORTS ARE particularly notable in light of the group’s close ties to the Trump administration; Iran’s regional adversaries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel; and the Republican Party’s biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.
Senior UANI adviser John Bolton worked for UANI both before and after his stint in the Trump administration as national security adviser. UANI’s umbrella group, Counter Extremism Project United Inc, paid Bolton $240,000 between 2016 and 2017.Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser was quickly followed by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran.
Besides Bolton, the Trump administration twice sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to UANI’s annual conference, held during the United Nations General Assembly. Pompeo used the occasions to promote outlandish claims about Europe purportedly financing Iranian terrorism and to present the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy to UANI’s audience, which included senior diplomats and intelligence officials from the Persian Gulf and Israel.
The group’s last summit, held in September, featuredU.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is now Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, as well as a who’s who of the Trump administration’s hawkish Middle East partners, including top diplomats from Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel. (UANI and its affiliated organizations have a number of links to Gulf monarchies, including a 2014 email from a UANI advisory board member soliciting “support” from the United Arab Emirates.)
UANI’s top funder, billionaire Thomas Kaplan — an investor whose companies have looked to profit from “political unrest” in the Middle East — was also in attendance at the summit.
Finally, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s financial support for UANI closely tracks the Republican megadonors’ hawkish views toward Iran.In 2013, Sheldon Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University that Obama should launch a nuclear strike on Iran and threaten that Iran will be “wiped out” if it doesn’t dismantle its nuclear program. The Adelsons were Trump’s biggest funders in the 2016 election and the GOP’s biggest funders in the 2018 cycle. They are expected to contribute at least $100 million to Trump’s reelection efforts and Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 cycle.
While the Trump administration’s extreme financial pressure against Iran is coinciding with the coronavirus outbreak, Tyler Cullis, the sanctions lawyer, was careful to note that issues with ensuring a robust trade of medical and humanitarian supplies to Iran began under previous administrations. “While those problems have been exacerbated under the Trump administration,” Cullis said, “their origination takes place more than a decade ago when prior administrations first started imposing enormous sanctions pressure on Iran’s financial sector.”
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Schumer calls for investigation of Trump’s new intel chief’s work as an undisclosed foreign agent
Mark Sumner / Daily KosFebruary 27, 2020
It’s not enough that, in grabbing Twitter troll Richard Grenell as his new acting director of national intelligence, Donald Trump has installed someone who has no knowledge of intelligence and no experience…
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Trump has spent months trying to remake the Justice Department in Fox News’ image. Now he’s trying to do the same thing to the U.S. intelligence community.
Trump views federal agencies as extensions of his personal whim, and it is anathema to him that the job of the intelligence community might involve impartially providing accurate information. Trump announced he was replacing the former Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire after learning that one of his subordinates had briefed members of Congress that Russia was interfering with the 2020 election to help Trump’s campaign.
Maguire’s replacement shows where this is going. Trump has named Richard Grenell as the new acting director of national intelligence. Grenell, a former Republican political consultant, spokesperson for the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, and the current ambassador to Germany, is totally unqualified by the post’s typical measures. But he had two marks in his favor: He has made himself into a shamelessly fanatical Trump loyalist, and he used to be a Fox contributor. It's no wonder that Fox propagandists like Lou Dobbs were so excited.
Egged on by Fox News, Trump wanted the Justice Department to be used as a tool for the president's personal interests and political gain. He eventually found an Attorney General that would comply in William Barr. Now we're about to get the same thing with the intelligence community. The prospect is frightening -- but don't expect to hear that on Fox News.
Also:Roger Stonewas convicted of seven felonies. Here's what you need to know about him. Fox and right-wing media are still pushing loudly for a pardon.
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an 220
trump’s intel pick shows a ‘disinterest’ in national intelligence: foreign affairs expert
Alex HendersonFebruary 24, 2020
President Donald Trump has often been criticized for prioritizing loyalty and obedience over expertise, and a recent example is his decision to appoint Richard Grenell (U.S. ambassador to Germany) as…
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mma 220
Another former Fox News employee has a cabinet-level position. Here are some things to know about Richard Grenell.
Partisan ambassador to Germany now acting director of national intelligence
WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD
PUBLISHED 02/20/20 5:30 PM EST
President Donald Trump has named Richard Grenell acting director of national intelligence — a major post for someone who has no actual intelligence experience but who is a loyal customer at Trump hotels and his staunch political ally.
What’s more, The New York Times reports that Grenell’s appointment comes immediately after Trump replaced the previous acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, out of his anger at Maguire having allowed a briefing of House lawmakers on Russia’s continued efforts to interfere with the 2020 election.
The Times reports that administration sources say the change of personnel is just a coincidence:
Though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing may have played a role in the removal of Mr. Maguire, who had told people in recent days that he believed he would remain in the job, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a personal kinship with Mr. Maguire.
For now, anyway, Grenell claims that his appointment is only a temporary measure.
Grenell became one of many Fox News personalities who joined the Trump administration when he was confirmed as ambassador to Germany in 2018.
He is also an avowed fan of the far-right Breitbart news site. “It’s no joke that I’m a Breitbart fan, and I read it every day,” he told them in a 2018 interview. “They ‘got me’ early on, and what I mean by that is Breitbart sees the value of a consistent conservative, and you have a lot of choices in getting your message out. For me, it hasn’t always been perfectly positive coverage, and sometimes they report on things I don’t feel comfortable with, but that is the beauty of it. I love the courageousness of it. I hope I’m just as courageous.”
He had previously served as spokesperson for the U.S. delegation to the United Nations during the George W. Bush years — during which time his duties included voicing the administration’s support for the Iraq War. In 2012, he was forced to resign from his position as a foreign policy and national security spokesperson for the Mitt Romney campaign after key right-wing religious figures objected to Romney hiring a gay man.
Over the years, Grenell also gained a reputation for denigrating prominent women on both sides of the aisle online, including Hillary Clinton, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, and U.S. ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich, the wife of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
As an example of his prolific online trolling, Grenell once took an unremarkably inclusive tweet from Hillary Clinton, recognizing the Easter holiday, and accused her of being “nervous about offending Muslims."
Members of the press have also attracted his personal condemnations over the years. And just two weeks ago, he was taking time from his schedule as ambassador to Germany to argue online with MSNBC’s Morning Joe program about Trump's record on Ukraine — a key issue in the impeachment saga — compared to the Obama administration.
And in 2015, he took a dim view of civil liberties and surveillance, when it came to stopping terrorism.
“If you're having an affair, no one cares about listening in to your phone calls. If you're having an affair with an ISIS attacker, then we do care,” he told Fox News. “But all of this hype that somehow we can't gather the proper intelligence simply because of, you know, someone's concern that they're being listened to, their civil liberties — look, we cannot be governed by fear, and in order to do that we have got to get the attackers when they're planning the attacks, So, gather all the intelligence that's needed.”
Recently, Grenell has found a political home in Trump’s Republican Party, advocating for the global far-right and praising Trump in general.
In June last year, Grenell gave an interview to Breitbart London and spoke of his eagerness to support right-wing movements in Europe. “There are a lot of conservatives throughout Europe who have contacted me to say they are feeling there is a resurgence going on,” Grenell said. “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.”
The interview ignited controversy, and German political figures objected, saying Grenell overstepped the role of an ambassador -- with one politician accusing him of “interfering” in German politics. Grenell, in turn, posted a tweet that seemed to both deny and reaffirm what he had said: “The idea that I’d endorse candidates/parties is ridiculous. I stand by my comments that we are experiencing an awakening from the silent majority - those who reject the elites & their bubble. Led by Trump.”
In the same Breitbart interview, Grenell also spoke against George Soros, a favorite bogeyman of far-right conspiracy theorists and Trump’s inner circle. “Look, I think his policies are failed policies,” Grenell said of the billionaire philanthropist, adding: “I think that they’re very geared towards the elites, not for the silent majority.”
In November 2018, Grenell appeared with Fox’s anti-immigration host Tucker Carlson in an interview where the two directly criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies on refugee admission.
“I think the United States is having a better conversation than the Germans, to be honest. This has largely been controlled by elites in Berlin,” Grenell said. “But normal everyday people are beginning to say, wait a minute, this policy is not working.”
Video file
CitationFrom the November 28, 2018, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
Grenell’s record of pushing political talking points also extends further back to his regular appearances on Fox News. In 2015, when right-wing media first began ginning up controversy about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, Grenell told then-Fox anchor Megyn Kelly that Clinton would have rendered herself unable to do her job and thus endangered U.S. security.
“You know, one other point that's being missed here, Megyn, if her email was private, that means embassy personnel around the world had no idea what the email address was,” Grenell said. “They don't know how to link to her. They don't know how to get her. So if there's a crisis at an embassy that's going on, and you pull up the global address system, Hillary Clinton doesn't show up because she doesn't have a state.gov email address.”
And in July 2016, Grenell told Fox host Steve Doocy that Clinton and her top aides should all lose their security clearances.
“She should, Jake Sullivan should, Huma [Abedin] should, Cheryl Mills should, and a whole bunch of people at the State Department who are on those email chains. The State Department press corps has got to get active here and start pushing them because a whole bunch of people need to lose their security clearances, and there’s a line of people behind them that have lost their security clearances, but they weren’t on a presidential campaign.”
Video file
CitationFrom the July 6, 2016, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Ironically, key people in the Trump administration have used private email accounts to conduct official business, and the cybersecurity at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort is notoriously unsound.
Also during the 2016 campaign, Grenell publicly attacked Khizr Khan, the gold-star father who spoke at the Democratic convention against Trump’s proposed Muslim immigrant ban. Trump later attacked the Khan family on Twitter, and Grenell suggested that Khan was opportunistically exploiting his son’s death for his own immigration law practice.
“Mr. Khan entered the political debate,” Grenell said in a tweet. “His ongoing media campaign on immigration is all about his business,” he continued, linking to an article about Khan’s practice. Grenell later insisted that it is “not fair to let Mr. Khan conduct an ongoing media campaign without showing how he benefits.” He repeated his attack in another tweet: “As I said, ‘his ongoing media campaign’ is about immigration issues. And it’s his business!”
---
trump’s intel pick will blow up in his face as agencies revolt and leak the truth: Ex-CIA official
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-names-right-wing-troll-to-lead-intelligence-agencies/
no lnx
Trump names right-wing troll to lead intelligence agencies
Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon February 21, 2020
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has had a long career in politics, and I’m sure she has many accomplishments that she’s proud of. But I’m afraid she’s going to be remembered for one thing and one thing only: Her declaration that President Trump had “learned his lesson” after his impeachment trial in the Senate. That would have been a ridiculous rationale for voting to acquit any president on the evidence in that case, but saying it about Trump was downright laughable. He has proved that every single day since the trial ended.
Right out of the box he vowed revenge. He attacked Sen. Mitt Romney, the one Republican who voted to convict him in the Senate trial, and then immediately set about firing witnesses who had testified against him, including the twin brother of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, for no apparent reason.
Trump has pushed the Senate Republican majority and the Department of Justice to help him exact his vengeance by investigating professionals who were involved in the Russia and Ukraine investigation. His apparent collusion with Attorney General Bill Barr to interfere in criminal cases has caused a near-insurrection within the Department of Justice.
This week Trump went on a pardon spree, freeing a list of people who had been convicted of corruption, sending yet another obvious message to those inside and outside the justice system that he is unencumbered by the rule of law. It remains to be seen if he will pardon his old pal Roger Stone, now that he’s been sentenced to 40 months in prison. But if he has any fear that Stone has information to trade, you can be sure he’ll do it.
That’s just a partial list of “lessons” Trump has learned since the Senate failed to do its duty, and I’m sure I’m leaving some out. But the announcement on Thursday that Trump will name his ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, as the new acting director of national security may be the most shocking action of recent weeks.
Grenell is one of the most odious Trump toadies in the administration, and that’s really saying something. Like so many others, he came to Trump’s attention as a sharp-tongued Fox News personality. It’s likely that Trump didn’t know much about him other than the fact he was a big fan. That’s all it takes. Truthfully, if he’d known Grenell’s whole story he would like him even more.
Grenell held a few PR flak jobs in the government, working for the likes of John Bolton at the UN, where he was universally reviled.But he is best known as a Twitter troll, just like the president. He quit Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, where he’d been hired as a foreign policy spokesman, after his Twitter feed was revealed to be full of nasty comments. During the 2016 campaign, he got back in the game and really made a name for himself as a crude and vicious Trump supporter.
Needless to say, Trump loved it and gave him the plum job of U.S. ambassador to Berlin, where he immediately alienated everyone in sight. On his very first day on the job, referencing the fact that Trump had withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, Grenell tweeted that “Germans doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” Obviously he had no authority to dictate any such thing, and people in Germany were not amused, to say the least. Leaders of two German political parties have called him a “brat” and a “failure” and requested that he be withdrawn. No such luck.
Grenell has gone on to cultivate the far right in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, particularly Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the “boyish face” of his country’s far-right government. Grenell told Breitbart that he wanted to “empower” Kurz and others like him in Europe, which exceeds the job description of ambassador just a wee bit.
Most recently, he was implicated in the baroque Ukraine scandal, and particularly in the side plot involving Lev Parnas and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Parnas was reportedly instructed (perhaps by Rudy Giuliani) to ask Grenell for a heads-up if the Department of Justice decided to seek Firtash’s extradition to the U.S. Grenell apparently agreed to do it, which was probably illegal.
Grenell’s name has been floating all over the Trump administration for a while, mentioned as a possible national security adviser after Bolton’s departure or a potential secretary of state if Mike Pompeo quits. He has no qualifications for any such posts, other than his personal fealty to Donald Trump.
The professionals in the intelligence community are reportedly very alarmed by Grenell’s appointment, as they should be. The DNI oversees all the U.S. intelligence services and has access to all the most important capabilities and secrets. It is unclear whether Grenell even has a top-level security clearance or could qualify for one.
This appointment was announced as yet another “acting” assignment, which seems odd since an acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, was already in place. (He has filled the job since last August, when Dan Coats departed.) Administration sources have said that Grenell will only serve until Trump nominates someone for the permanent position, which would require Senate confirmation, and won’t resign his position in Germany. So why put in another placeholder?
Late on Thursday, the Washington Post and the New York Times reported the answer: Trump wanted Maguire out immediately because his department had briefed the House Intelligence Committee last week and told members that the Russian government is once again interfering in the presidential campaign on Trump’s behalf. As usual, Trump is livid that members of his administration actually performed their legal and constitutional duties, and is determined to punish those who did. He was especially angry that Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a major villain in Trump World, was given this information.
Aside from Maguire, the second-ranking official in the DNI’s office, longtime intelligence professional Andrew Hallman, also announced his departure, leaving the top echelon without experienced leadership. But never fear, another Trumpian hack is on the way. According to Politico, hyper-partisan henchman Kash Patel, the former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.,who played an important role in House Republicans’ attempts to discredit the Russia investigation, will come on board as “senior adviser” to Grenell.
It’s clear that Trump has moved his most dedicated disciples into the DNI’s office in order to prevent any more briefings on Russian interference on his behalf and to ensure that the intelligence community is brought to heel. Between this and Bill Barr’s unlimited mandate to investigate the intelligence on election interference from 2016, one can assume that the purge of anyone Trump considers a threat within the intelligence agencies or the Justice Department is now in full effect.
So in a sense Susan Collins was right. Trump has learned his lesson: Only proven Trump loyalists will run national security and federal law enforcement from now on. What could possibly go wrong?
Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.
==
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Grenell
wiki war frozen: Datamaster, the phrase "ranking-member of the cabinet" is not a term I have ever heard anywhere but here. It is a phrase, and a description, that you invented. But we rely on what Reliable Sources say, and Reliable Sources are unanimous that he is serving in a cabinet-level position. He is "acting," because he has not been confirmed by the senate, but he is filling a cabinet level position and is the first openly gay person to do so. There really isn't anything more to say. -- [MelanieN (talk) 05:27, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
MelanieN I disagree with your assessment and I believe that it warrants outside commenting from the community. I have attempted to do this multiple times and you keep reverting my edits so if you're not going to allow an Rfc then we can proceed to arbitration. The idea is to get a general consensus and you're not allowing that to happen. Datamaster1 (talk) 05:31, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Amazing @Datamaster1:. You only started editing Wikipedia yesterday & immediately, you know how to contact other editors, how to create an Rfc, how to file an Arbcom request. Truly impressive. GoodDay (talk) 06:30, 21 February 2020 (UTC)I have done a lot of reading. But this is not the place for insinuations about me if you have something to say please take it to my talk page. Datamaster1 (talk) 07:33, 21 February 2020 (UTC)]
Richard Allen Grenell (born September 18, 1966) is the current United States Ambassador to Germany. He previously served as U.S. spokesman under four ambassadors at the United Nations.
Grenell served for a time as foreign policy spokesperson for Mitt Romney in his 2012 campaign for President of the United States, becoming the first openly gay spokesperson for a Republican presidential candidate.[1][2]^
In September 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Grenell to be U.S. Ambassador to Germany.[3] He was confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 56 to 42 on April 26, 2018.[4] He presented his credentials to the President of Germany on May 8, 2018.[5] On February 19, 2020, President Trump announced his intention to install Grenell as the acting Director of National Intelligence.[6] Grenell is considered a staunch Trump loyalist.[7][8][9]^
2.4Acting director of national intelligence
Early life and education
Grenell graduated with a bachelor's degree in Government and Public Administration from Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri. He received a master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government ^[10]
Career
Prior to his post at the UN, Grenell was a political adviser to a number of prominent Republicans, including George Pataki and Dave Camp.[11]^
United Nations (2001–2008)
2009–2017In 2001, Grenell was appointed by President George W. Bush as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy for the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Serving in that role until 2008, Grenell became the longest-serving U.S. spokesman at the United Nations, advising four different U.S. Ambassadors. During his tenure, Grenell led communication strategies on such issues as the War on Terror, global peacekeeping operations, Iran and North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, and the UN Oil for Food corruption scandal.[10]^
In 2009, Grenell founded Capitol Media Partners, an international strategic media and public affairs consultancy with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C.[10] He was under contract with Fox News where he worked as a contributor, commenting on foreign affairs and the media.[12][13] He has written for The Wall Street Journal,[14][15] CBS News,[16][17] CNN,[18] Politico,[19] Huffington Post,[20] The Washington Times,[21] Newsmax,[22] and Al Jazeera.[23] In 2012, CNN ranked Grenell's social media outreach as one of the top 5,[24] and Time magazine named Grenell as one of the Top 10 Political Twitter Feeds of 2014.[25] In 2013, Grenell was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.[26]^
Ambassador to Germany
In May 2018, within hours of taking office in Berlin as US Ambassador, Grenell offended diplomats and business leaders when he tweeted that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”[32] The tweet was widely perceived as a threat, with the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, commenting that "This man was accredited as ambassador only yesterday. To give German businesses such orders … that’s just not how you can treat your allies.”[33] The leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party stated that Grenell "does appear to need some tutoring" in the "fine art of diplomacy", while the Die Linke party urged the Merkel government to summon Grenell to explain his comments.[33]In September 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Grenell to become the United States Ambassador to Germany. After a significant delay, the Senate confirmed Grenell 56–42 on April 26, 2018.[27] He was sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on May 7, 2018, making Grenell the highest-ranking openly gay official ever in a Republican administration.[28][29] Grenell was also under consideration for the posts of U.S. Ambassador to NATO and United States Ambassador to the United Nations.[30][31]^
In June 2018, Grenell stirred controversy by telling Breitbart News, "I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders."[34] It was viewed as anti-establishment.[35][36] This was described as a breach of diplomatic protocol and a breach of Article 14 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires ambassadors to be politically neutral in the domestic politics of the countries where they serve.[37][34] Prominent German politicians called for Grenell's dismissal.[38][39][40][41] Martin Schulz, former leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, said, "What this man is doing is unheard of in international diplomacy. If a German ambassador were to say in Washington that he is there to boost the Democrats, he would have been kicked out immediately."[38]^
Grenell was a regular contributor on Fox News's Tucker Carlson Tonight during the first few months of his Ambassadorship in Germany. In November 2018 he made an appearance where he repeated his criticism of Angela Merkel's immigration policies and compared her unfavorably to the recently-elected Chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz, whom he claimed "won in a very big way" because of his strict stance on immigration. The magazine Der Spiegel called it a "thinly veiled call for a change of government in Berlin".[37]^
In December 2018, during the affair surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius, Grenell wrote to the magazine complaining about an anti-American institutional bias ("Anti-Amerikanismus") and asked for an independent investigation.[42][43] Grenell wrote that "These fake news stories largely focus on U.S. policies and certain segments of the American people."[44]^
In January 2019, Grenell told Handelsblatt that European companies participating in the construction of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are "always in danger, because sanctions are always possible". The Trump administration has long opposed the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 — a pipeline for delivering natural gas from Russia to Germany.[45] Within that context he also sent letters to German companies involved in the construction of said Nord Stream 2, threatening sanctions.[46] In response, Angela Merkel's successor as leader of the Christian Democrat Union, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, stated that "The American Ambassador operates in a, shall I say, somewhat unusual diplomatic manner."[47]^
Der Spiegel published a profile of Grenell on January 11, 2019, using interviews with 30 “American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts". The magazine claimed that "Almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism." The profile claimed that Grenell is politically isolated in Berlin because of his association with the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, causing the leaders of the mainstream German parties, including the Chancellor herself, to avoid contact with him.[37] The sources claimed that Grenell "knows little about Germany and Europe, that he ignores most of the dossiers his colleagues at the embassy write for him, and that his knowledge of the subject matter is superficial."[37]^
In February 2019, it was announced that Grenell was leading the Trump administration's newly formed effort to promote the decriminalization of homosexuality in nations in which homosexuality was illegal.[48]^
In March 2019, Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy chairman of the Free Democratic Party, called for Grenell to be expelled from Germany, stating, "Any U.S. diplomat who acts like a high commissioner of an occupying power must learn that our tolerance also knows its limits."[49]^
On February 19, 2020, Trump named Grenell as acting director of national intelligence, effective immediately, replacing Joseph Maguire. He will reportedly keep his position as ambassador to Germany while serving as acting DNI.[50] The White House press release stated that Grenell had "years of experience working with our Intelligence Community in a number of additional positions",[51] but this was disputed by critics such as Democratic senator Mark Warner, who claimed that Grenell has no background in intelligence matters.[52][53][54] Grenell is considered a staunch Trump loyalist.[7][8][9]Acting director of national intelligence
The following day, Kash Patel, a National Security Council official and former aide to congressman Devin Nunes, was named a senior advisor to Grenell. Patel was the lead author of the Nunes memo.[55]^
Six days prior to Grenell's appointment, Maguire deputy Shelby Pierson—the intelligence community's top election security official—advised members of the House Intelligence Committee that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election in an effort to get Trump re-elected. Trump chastised Maguire for allowing the briefing, concerned that Democrats might "weaponize" the information against him.[8][56][57]^
Grenell is the first openly gay person to serve in a cabinet-level position.[58]^
Personal life
Grenell is a registered Republican.[59]^
In June 2013, Grenell revealed that he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and started chemotherapy.[60] In September 2013, Grenell announced that he was in remission.[61]^
Grenell has a longtime partner, Matt Lashey.[62]^
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an 220
...“What we’re seeing now is an anomaly, such an aberration from what we’ve seen in the past, about the importance, the independence of the intelligence community,” Brennan said. “Two non-partisan national security officials have been removed at the helm of the intelligence community. [Ex-acting DNI] Joe Maguire and then Andrew Hallman, a senior CIA officer who was Joe Maguire’s deputy. That is a virtual decapitation of the intelligence
...
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==
Why Trump’s new pick for director of national intelligence is his worst selection ever
Mark Sumner / Daily Kos February 20, 2020
It’s hard to say that Donald Trump has really excelled at anything. But on the topic of naming the worst possible person to the most sensitive role, he can be genuinely…
==
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-to-name-bombastic-loyalist-a-top-intel-chief-despite-lack-of-qualifications-report/
no lnx
Trump to name bombastic loyalist as top intel chief despite lack of qualifications: report
Ambassador Richard Grenell with California Wine Representative
Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 19, 2020
President Donald Trump is expected to install Richard Grenell, his current Ambassador to Germany, as his next Acting Director of National Intelligence, according to The New York Times. Grenell is known as a bombastic Trump loyalist who has not been well received in Berlin.
Some eyebrows are being raised, not due to Grenell’s harsh attitudes but his disturbing lack of qualifications for the job of Director of National Intelligence, also known as the DNI.
The DNI is a Cabinet-level official who sits at the very top of the entire Intelligence Community, serving as the head of the 17 federal agencies that comprise it. They also serve as the President’s chief advisor on national security, and produce the top-secret President’s Daily Brief (PDB).
Federal law states quite clearly, “Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise.”
Ambassador to Germany does not qualify. Grenell previously has served as the spokesperson for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He has run a public affairs consultancy, has been a Fox News contributor, and for a few days was presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s national security spokesperson, but was forced to step down after conservatives blasted the former governor over Grenell’s sexual orientation.
In November the german magazine Der Spiegel ran a damning profile of Grenell titled, “Trump’s Ambassador Finds Few Friends in Germany.” (Ironically, one of the reasons Trump gave for firing his venerated Ambassador to Ukraine was that she was not well-liked in the country, which was false.)
“Since arriving in Berlin as U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell has flouted diplomatic conventions and attempted to interfere in domestic politics. He has since become politically isolated in the German capital,” Der Spiegel reported.
In the extremely “unflattering” article, Grenell is compared to “a right-wing extremist colonial officer.”
“The powerful avoid him. Doors have been shut. Few politicians to the left of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AFD) and the populist-conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), want to be seen with him.”
It gets worse.
Der Spiegel writes they spoke with 30 sources before publishing their report.
“Almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism. His brash demeanor, some claim, hides a deep insecurity, and they say he thirsts for the approval of others.”
All that aside, again, Grenell is not qualified, neither by law nor by common sense.
Some experts agree:
Report Advertisement
Garrett M. Graff
?
@vermontgmg
Reminder: Jim Clapper spent 50 years in intelligence, headed two agencies, and served as the Under Sec of intel at the Pentagon before becoming DNI. Ric Grenell was ... a notably rude Twitter troll. https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/1230262310847029248 …
Maggie Haberman
?
@maggieNYT
News - President Trump expected to tap Ric Grenell for ODNI https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html …
Joe Cirincione
?
@Cirincione
This is a national disgrace. Grenell would be the least qualified intelligence chief in US history. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html?referringSource=articleShare …
Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, was expected to be the president’s pick to be acting director of national intelligence.
Trump Expected to Name Richard Grenell as Acting Head of Intelligence
The move would place a Trump loyalist atop the intelligence agencies long viewed skeptically by the White House.
nytimes.com
Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck
Because Grenell is Senate-confirmed (as Ambassador to Germany), the President has the authority to name him Acting DNI under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Of course, there'd be no reason not to _nominate_ him to be the actual DNI if he were actually qualified for the job... https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1230262310847029248 …
Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
News - President Trump expected to tap Ric Grenell for ODNI https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html …
Josh Moon
@Josh_Moon
The moron running the country is about to appoint the least qualified intelligence director in history - by a wide margin. A move guaranteed to make us less safe as a country. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html …
Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, was expected to be the president’s pick to be acting director of national intelligence.
Trump Expected to Name Richard Grenell as Acting Head of Intelligence
The move would place a Trump loyalist atop the intelligence agencies long viewed skeptically by the White House.
nytimes.com
92
3:29 PM - Feb 19, 2020
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Olivia Gazis
?
@Olivia_Gazis
Replying to @Olivia_Gazis
Apart from questions about Grenell’s qualifications, temperament and relevant experience for this role, the move also raises questions about the Worldwide Threat Assessment - how soon would a brand new, acting DNI present an annual threat assessment before Congress
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cited as favorable vs amb yovanovich sp ukraine
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https://www.newsweek.com/germany-trump-ambassador-brat-failure-1368713
GERMAN POLITICIANS CALL TRUMP'S AMBASSADOR A 'BRAT' AND 'TOTAL DIPLOMATIC FAILURE,' DEMAND IMMEDIATE EXPULSION
BY JASON LEMON ON 3/19/19 AT 5:43 PM EDT
02:13
Who Is Richard Grenell?
WORLD
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
DONALD TRUMP
GERMANY
RICHARD GRENELL
Politicians in Germany lashed out at President Donald Trump's ambassador to their country on Tuesday, with some criticizing the diplomat, even calling for his expulsion.
Richard Grenell was appointed by Trump last May, and has drawn significant controversy in his relatively short tenure as ambassador. On Tuesday, Grenell openly criticized Germany's defense spending, arguing that it sent a "worrisome signal" to NATO allies. Those comments led to swift and severe backlash from several members of parliament.
"Any U.S. diplomat who acts like a high commissioner of an occupying power must learn that our tolerance also knows its limits," Wolfgang Kubicki, the deputy chairman of the opposition Free Democrats (FDP) and one of the Bundestag's five deputy speakers, responded, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. Pointing to what he said was repeated interference by Grenell, Kubicki urged Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to "immediately" expel the diplomat.
GettyImages-956002290
Ambassador Richard Allen Grenell, left, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, right, pose for photographers during an accreditation ceremony for new ambassadors in Berlin on May 8, 2018.
Kubicki wasn't alone in his criticism of Grenell. Carsten Schneider, the chief whip of the Social Democratic party (SPD), said the ambassador was acting like a "brat" and referred to him as a "total diplomatic failure," according to the Financial Times. "With his repeated clumsy provocations, Mr. Grenell is damaging the transatlantic relationship," Shneider said.
Even the chief whip of Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democratic Union party responded critically. Michael Grosse-Brömer said that Grenell should look at the bigger picture, pointing out that "Germany is fulfilling its obligation and is very engaged," the Financial Times reported.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told Newsweek that "Germany, like the United States, is a free country with a free press. Politicians, pundits and the media are entitled to share their opinions as part of the political process. That is one of the fantastic and unifying qualities of U.S. and German society." They also reiterated Trump's support of Grenell, saying he "is the president's personal representative to Germany."
Last summer, Grenell also drew criticism shortly after his appointment over comments he made in an interview with right-wing Breitbart News. "I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders," the ambassador said. "I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left."
Grenell added that "a lot of conservatives" in Europe had told him they had felt a "resurgence" of right-wing ideas across the continent. He said those individuals had credited Trump's victory as empowering "people to say that they can't just allow the political class to determine before an election takes place, who's going to win and who should run."
Germany's Foreign Ministry asked Grenell to clarify his comments at the time, as they were seen as a stated attempt to interfere in the country's political system. Politicians in the country also lashed out.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Donald Trump arrive for a group photo at the G7 Summit on May 26, 2017 in Taormina, Italy
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"As a member of the SPD, a left party with a long, proud legacy of fighting, together with the United States, both Nazis and communists, I am irritated to hear from Ambassador Grenell about our allegedly failed policies," Metin Hakverdi?, a Social Democrat delegate who is also a member of the German-U.S. parliamentary friendship group, said, The Guardian reported.
Despite being close allies and having worked closely together for decades, relations have been strained between Washington and Berlin since Trump took office. Last May, Merkel pointedly argued that Europe could no longer rely on the U.S. for protection. Later in July, Maas appeared to take a dig at deteriorating relations under Trump, saying: "Europe must not let itself be divided, however sharp the verbal attacks and absurd the tweets may be."
Trump said last year that the European Union, of which Germany is a key member, is "a foe" of the U.S. when it comes to trade, despite decades of close cooperation and the NATO military alliance.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a response from the U.S. State Department.
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/**2018/06**/germanys-real-problem-isnt-with-trumps-trollish-ambassador-its-with-trump.html
Throughout the opening months of the Trump presidency, and Rex Tillerson’s tenure as secretary of state, a major line of criticism against the administration was the slow pace at which it was filling key foreign policy positions, particularly the dozens of ambassadorships to important allies and trouble spots that had been left vacant. In the meantime, the ambassadorial roles in these embassies were carried out by career foreign service officers, but, the argument went, these officials were hamstrung by their inability to convey the actual policy preferences of the idiosyncratic and unpredictable new president.
Richard Grenell, who has served as U.S. ambassador to Germany since May, is an example of an ambassador who is fully in line with his boss’s thinking and preferences. He’s also an example of why Trump’s critics should sometimes be careful what they wish for.
As a highly partisan figure with a reputation as a Twitter troll, Grenell was a controversial pick to begin with, and his nomination was held in limbo for months with heavy opposition from congressional Democrats. As spokesperson for the U.N. mission to the United Nations, he was described by reporters as “rude,” a “bully,” and “unbearable.” When he was appointed spokesman for the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012, he had to delete hundreds of past tweets, many of them mocking the physical appearances of women including Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. (He lasted only a few days in the role due to both the Twitter controversy and objections from social conservatives to the fact that he’s gay.) He was also an early defender of Trump in his most recent role as Fox News contributor, which, as with his former boss at the U.N., John Bolton, was apparently enough to get him a job.
The Trump administration has had a strained relationship with Germany and its chancellor, Angela Merkel, from the beginning. It’s hard not to view it as an intentional provocation that Trump appointed a figure like Grenell as ambassador to a government with a near fetishistic attachment to diplomatic norms. Just hours after arriving in Berlin in May, shortly after Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, Grenell angered his hosts with a tweet stating, “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” German officials and commentators tut-tutted that it was not a U.S. ambassador’s place to give orders to German companies.
A former German ambassador to the United States tweeted, “Ric: my advice, after a long ambassadorial career: explain your own country’s policies, and lobby the host country - but never tell the host country what to do, if you want to stay out of trouble. Germans are eager to listen, but they will resent instructions.” Grenell responded, not inaccurately, that the language he had used was nearly identical to that in the White House fact sheet about the withdrawal.
That fracas was just a preview of the uproar that followed an interview Grenell gave to Breitbart last weekend in which he said he wanted to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe” who are “experiencing an awakening from the silent majority.”
He said he had been contacted by conservative leaders throughout the continent and that “there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.” The remark was interpreted as a show of support for the rising wave of right-wing populist parties throughout Europe, including Germany’s AfD, which has benefited from opposition to the immigration policies of Merkel’s center-right government. In the same interview, Grenell referred to Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as a “rockstar.” Kurz has controversially formed an alliance with the far-right populist Freedom Party and vocally opposed Merkel’s immigration policies.
The German government called on Grenell to clarify the comments, and left-wing politicians are now calling for his expulsion.Grenell has denied that he was endorsing any particular party, though he added on Twitter, “I stand by my comments that we are experiencing an awakening from the silent majority—those who reject the elites and their bubble. Led by Trump.”
Ambassadors are traditionally supposed to stay neutral—publicly anyway—in the domestic politics of the countries to which they are appointed. And at a time when there’s growing concern about support from Vladimir Putin’s Russia to populist parties throughout Europe, the ambassador’s suggestion that these parties are part of a global movement led by Trump is not exactly helpful.
On the other hand, it’s no secret that Trump has sympathy for far-right parties in Europe—he came close to endorsing Marine Le Pen in the most recent French election—or that he views Merkel’s policies as “insane.”
A more traditional ambassador might respect all the norms of international diplomacy and do his or her best to translate the mixed signals and provocations coming out of Washington into something coherent; however, it wouldn’t change the fact that Trump himself is disrespectful and incoherent. Grenell is a convenient foil for German politicians and commentators, but it’s also apparent that the person they really want removed from office is his boss.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/05/09/twitter-troll-takes-post-u-s-ambassador-germany-immediately-offends-germans/
no lnx
...Grenell’s inaugural Twitter address to his hosts,a stern command to German companies doing business in Iran to obey the American president’s decision to sabotage the nuclear arms control agreement that opened the way for Western investment, or face U.S. sanctions, did not go over well.
As Germany’s leading financial daily, Handelsblatt, reported, the tweet drew thousands of comments, “many of them from angry Germans basically telling the ambassador, a longtime critic of the Iran deal, to butt out.”
Among the more temperate replies to Grenell’s tweeted threat was one from Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the United States, who advised the novice diplomat to avoid issuing “instructions” to his hosts.
Richard Grenell
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@RichardGrenell
8 May
As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.
Wolfgang Ischinger
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@ischinger
Ric: my advice, after a long ambassadorial career: explain your own country’s policies, and lobby the host country - but never tell the host country what to do, if you want to stay out of trouble. Germans are eager to listen, but they will resent instructions.
12:15 AM - May 9, 2018
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Grenell’s comments sparked anger across the political spectrum. Fabio De Masi of Die Linke, a far-left opposition party, called on the German foreign ministry to make it clear to Grenell that his threats on behalf of “the arsonist in the White House” were inappropriate.
Germany’s finance minister, Olaf Scholz, reportedly pledged on Wednesday to protect German businesses working with Iran from potential U.S. sanctions.
In response to the wave of criticism generated by his tweet, Grenell suggested that he was just following orders and had used “the exact language sent out from the White House.”
Richard Grenell
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@RichardGrenell
the exact language sent out from the White House talking points & fact sheet. https://twitter.com/ameckardt/status/994085248332914689 …
10:38 PM - May 8, 2018
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It was notable, however, that America’s ambassadors to the two other European signatories to the Iran deal, Britain and France, issued no such warnings to companies in those nations.
Rolf Mützenich, an arms control expert from the Social Democratic wing of Germany’s governing coalition, suggested that Grenell appeared to be imitating his boss “in miniature,” through his use of Twitter as a battering ram.
That impression, however, is unfair to Grenell, whose reputation as a noted Twitter troll far predates his association with Trump.
Grenell, who once served the Bush administration as U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s spokesman, was forced to delete hundreds of sexist, rude comments from his Twitter feed in 2012, during his brief tenure as foreign affairs spokesman for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
The uproar over his tweets at the time, combined with anger from Republican homophobes who objected to the fact that he was gay, led to Grenell’s resignation from the Romney campaign just days after he had joined it.
In addition to mocking the physical appearance of female political figures, Grenell has frequently used his Twitter account to harass journalists, relentlessly accusing them of partisanship for any reporting that challenges the far-right ideas he promotes.
Rather than engage in dialogue, Grenell uses the platform to badger reporters whose work he dislikes to the point where many eventually tire of his inane arguments and block him.
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Jennifer Bendery
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@jbendery
At 1:45, the Senate is voting to confirm Richard Grenell to be U.S. ambassador to Germany.
Congrats to the first person I ever blocked on Twitter for aggressive rudeness!
10:30 AM - Apr 26, 2018
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Alex Burns
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@alexburnsNYT
Must not engage @RichardGrenell on Twitter. Must not engage @RichardGrenell on Twitter. Must not engage @RichardGrenell on Twitter.
12:37 PM - Aug 16, 2012
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He then proudly boasts of being blocked, as if goading journalists into disengaging with him to avoid his tirades was an achievement.
Richard Grenell
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@RichardGrenell
Ha! @AymanM & @ron_fournier both blocked me after I criticized their "reporting". They're in the criticism business but can't take it.
2:03 PM - Jan 11, 2015
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Richard Grenell
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@RichardGrenell
MSNBC reporter Suzy Khimm wants you to listen to her but not respond to what she says #OneWayStreet #ThinSkin #Weak
6:28 PM - Dec 11, 2014
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Richard Grenell
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@RichardGrenell
when a reporter calls you a troll, they mean you have made them uncomfortable about their bias and they have no comeback. #TrollAwayTweeps
9:06 AM - Jul 29, 2013
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(In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of the legion of reporters who resorted to the block button to escape Grenell’s harassment. In my case, the final straw was his claim that, by sharing video of Richard Nixon bowing to Chairman Mao during the absurd controversy over Barack Obama bowing to another foreign leader, I was secretly working for the 2012 Obama campaign.)
Calling Grenell a troll is perhaps not entirely accurate, though, since his reputation for harassing reporters was well-established before the advent of Twitter. During his tenure as spokesman for the U.S. delegation at the U.N. members of the press corps described him to the Village Voice, in 2003, as “rude,” “arrogant,” “unbearable,” and a “bully.”
It is unclear what sort of vetting process Grenell went through before being dispatched to Germany as Trump’s representative, but the Germans should be braced for more confrontational behavior if his personal interactions with reporters are any guide. Irwin Arieff, who covered the U.N. for Reuters during the Bush administration told the Huffington Post in 2012 that his memory ofGrenell was as “the most dishonest and deceptive press person I ever worked with.”
“He often lied, even more frequently offered half answers or withheld information that would weaken his case or reflect poorly on his ideological point of view,” Arieff added.
Daniel Dale
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@ddale8
For the first time in American history, a Twitter troll has been made an ambassador. There is hope for all you eggs and bald eagles. https://twitter.com/deirdrewalshcnn/status/989569126149623810 …
11:47 AM - Apr 26, 2018
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The new U.S. ambassador’s abrasive start to his tenure in Germany comes as that nation is searching for ways to keep the deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program in place. According to Handelsblatt, German exports to Iran were worth $3.5 billion last year, and many of Germany’s biggest businesses are now working with the country.
In addition to Germany, France, Britain and the European Union helped to negotiate the deal with Iran, and are considering ways to keep it alive despite Trump’s threat to impose new U.S. sanctions on European firms that do business in Iran. One legal measure under consideration would be using an existing E.U. law to shield German, French and British companies from American sanctions.
Updated: Wednesday, May 10, 8:25 a.m. EDT
This post was revised to add a new headline, more tweets from Richard Grenell’s Twitter feed and to note his claim that his offensive tweet used language provided by the White House.
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https://www.alternet.org/donald-trumps-trade-war-masks-darker-agenda-aiding-far-right-europe
djt moron but
there are others with a more sophisticated agenda, however, which may be even more concerning since they seem to see Trump as a useful tool. One of those is former Trump campaign chief and senior adviser Steve Bannon, who has been out of the limelight these last few months. The last we heard Trump was calling him "sloppy Steve," but apparently Bannon hasn't lost his affection for the big guy in spite of that. Frankly, Trump may not have lost his for Bannon either -- as long as someone is willing to kiss his ring he'll invite them back into his circle before long.
Fareed Zakaria interviewed Bannon in Rome recently where he was enthusiastically cheering on the chaos of the recent Italian elections, implying that a new day of economic populism was surging across Europe like a Panzer division on methamphetamines. He was full of the usual contradictions and muddled philosophical compost, but he essentially made the case that right-wing nationalism is the wave of the future, while trying unconvincingly to claim that race, ethnicity and religion have nothing whatsoever to do with it. He sputtered his way through an unconvincing explanation about how Trump's massive tax cuts were the basis of Trump's economic populism:
Europe is about a year ahead of the United States. . . . You see populist-nationalist movements with reform [here]. . . . You could begin to see the elements of Bernie Sanders coupled with the Trump movement that really becomes a dominant political force in American politics.
It's hard to say what's going to happen in America but it's hard to imagine a successful marriage between Sanders' left-wing populism and Trump's right-wing nativism. The xenophobia and racism is a real sticking point.
In Europe there is certainly a rising right-wing movement that Bannon and his allies are closely observing, presumably for tips on how to use Trump to make it happen in America. For instance, Trump's newly confirmed ambassador to Germany, a former right-wing hit man and odious Twitter troll named Richard Grenell, has made one of the worst first impressions of any diplomat in history with this tweet:
There was widespread indignation from across the German political spectrum but Grenell refused to back down, basically telling the German people he was only following orders:
Mind you, he was the only U.S. ambassador to do such a thing. Over the weekend Grenell went even further, giving an interview to Breitbart News in which he said he was “excited” by the rise of far-right parties in Europe and was prepared “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.” Breitbart reported:
Unafraid to name names, Mr Grenell expressed a deep respect and admiration for the young Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz saying, “Look, I think Sebastian Kurz is a rockstar. I’m a big fan.”
Chancellor Kurz, leader of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), formed a coalition with the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) earlier this year, and has been one of the strongest advocates for securing the European Union’s external border.
Not long after the formation of the coalition, Kurz stood up to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejecting the controversial European Union migrant quota system. He was also been [sic] a leading conservative on the topic of counter-Islamisation while Foreign Minister in the previous coalition government, advocating and helping to pass a ban on the full-face Islamic veil.
The German government was not amused. According to Robert Mackay at The Intercept, it "demanded a formal explanation from the United States on Monday of what, exactly, the new U.S. ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, meant when he promised to use his office to help far-right nationalists inspired by Donald Trump take power across Europe." Grenell tweeted that he did not plan to endorse anyone but stood by his claim that Europe, like America, is “experiencing an awakening from the silent majority — those who reject the elites and their bubble. Led by Trump.”
No doubt America's European allies were thrilled to hear that, especially with the neo-fascist rumblings coming from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and now Slovenian right-wing nationalist Janez Janša.
The trade war is bad enough. White nationalist Trumpers stomping around Europe shooting off their mouths and giving support to far right politicians is making it worse.
In a detail nearly no one will notice, Trump just named a right-wing academic and filmmaker named Michael Pack, who is allied with Bannon, to lead the broadcasting arm of the U.S. government, a $685 million agency that oversees prominent outlets such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. What could possibly go wrong there?
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